The UK government is demanding greater openness from the pharmaceutical industry after it spent £424m on stockpiling the Tamiflu anti-viral drug without ever knowing if it would work.

The UK Parliament’s public accounts committee wants the release of all research data on every prescription drug available on the country’s National Health Service (NHS). It is “of extreme concern” that the true effectiveness, and safety, of prescription drugs remains unknown because the drugs industry refuses to reveal research data from drug trials, the committee has said.

Half of all trial data is never released, and this is invariably the ‘bad news’ about drugs not working properly or not being safe.

(Source: BBC News, January 3, 2014).