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NHMRC backs AllTrials
NEWS
VC Parker calls reforms suicidal
U. of Canberra chief compares support for deregulation to disease, says UA has lost its way morally.
Program designed to increase transparency in medical results.
The National Health and Medical Research Council( NHMRC) has thrown its support behind an international campaign aimed at providing a more accurate picture of medical trial data.
The AllTrials campaign calls for the data from every validly completed medical trial to be made publically available to overcome the potentially harmful impact of not publishing negative results.
Professor of public health at Bond University, Chris Del Mar – an AllTrials advocate – recently explained in Campus Review the risk of unpublished negative trial results: Incomplete and potentially misleading impressions of the understood facts may be relied upon when designing policy or approving treatments as safe for clinical application.
In his announcement, NHMRC chief executive Warwick Anderson emphasised the importance of clinical trials in confirming the safety and efficacy of drugs, treatments and medical devices.
“ NHMRC believes in the value of registering clinical trials and promotes transparency in and the reporting of NHMRC-funded outcomes,” Anderson said.“ Transparency helps to ensure accountability and high standards in research – which ultimately results in better outcomes for the beneficiaries of medical discoveries.”
In a statement, the NHMRC said it was pleased to support the principles of the AllTrials campaign, which already has the backing of internationally renowned bodies, including the UK-based Wellcome Trust, the UK Medical Research Council and the South African Medical Research Council.
“ NHMRC is committed to the transparency and reporting of NHMRC-funded research outcomes.
“ The [ Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research( 2007)] states that researchers have a responsibility to their colleagues and the wider community to disseminate a full account of their research as broadly as possible. This responsibility is reinforced by the NHMRC Open Access Policy,” the statement read.
“ Whilst acknowledging that there may be some barriers to overcome, NHMRC supports the principle of publishing clinical trial methods and summary results.”
Del Mar welcomed the NHMRC support for the campaign as an important signal from the nation’ s pre-eminent medical research funding body.
“ We know that sometimes trials don’ t get published for a variety of reasons," he said. " They may be commercial reasons, for example in past cases involving drug companies or just because the results of the trials were negative and so not considered interesting enough by academics to publish.”
He said the risks of this practice were real and needed to be overcome through transparency.
The next step for the NHMRC, Del Mar said, was to follow the example of some other international clinical research funding bodies and make a percentage of research grant funding subject to a project’ s findings being published.
“ You would then, as in one case in the UK, then supply a journal in which it could be published,” he suggested.“ So [ a researcher ] can’ t just say,‘ Well I couldn’ t find a journal to publish it because it’ s a negative result’ – because you have provided a means for it to be made public. That is one way of doing it.” ■
University of Canberra VC professor Stephen Parker has launched a scathing attack against Universities Australia, his fellow university chiefs and the government, on the topic of the Coalition’ s controversial higher-education reforms.
In an incendiary speech to a National Alliance of Public Universities rally held at the University of Sydney ahead of the Senate vote that ultimately saw the original version of the legislation rejected, Parker slammed his colleagues and UA for their support of government reforms that he said would spell the end of the peak body itself.
He also pledged to cease attending UA meetings, which he likened to a medical condition in which“ the body eats its own flesh”, and warned that in the long-term the government’ s reforms would result in the privatisation of all public universities.
“ The support that UA is giving [ these reforms ] is a strange form of suicide ritual,” Parker told the rally.“ Older universities, which have benefited from decades of public money, built a brand at taxpayer expense and now want to run away with it, will raise their fees more.
“ The stratification of institutions will intensify, competition and dog-eat-dog will be the order of the day, and when they have milked the peak group for what they can get out of it the elites will dance away in a figure-eight formation.”
Parker was highly critical of national advertisements UA launched aimed at garnering cross-bench senators for the reforms, saying the campaign was“ full of Orwellian doublespeak [ claiming ] that the reforms are fair to students”.
“ Whether it breaks up soon because the tensions are too great, or it survives until the interest group factions have no more use for it and spit it out, UA is doomed because it has lost its moral compass,” Parker said. UA chair and James Cook University VC professor Sandra Harding stood by her support of the intention of the reforms saying Parker ' s views were well known. ■
See VC’ s Corner, page 18.
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