Podcast: Jennifer Miller, PhD & the Good Pharma Scorecard

I heard Jennifer Miller, PhD, use four numbers to discuss growing distrust of the drug industry: 12…70…1…17.

• 12% of general public trust drug companies for being honest and ethical
• 70% think they put profits before people
• #1 is how the drug industry used to be ranked around the world – as the most admired industry…
• …as recently as 17 years ago.

Miller is President of Bioethics International and an Assistant Professor at NYU School of Medicine. Here is her online bio.

She was one of 3 authors of a recent paper in BMJ Open that described a Good Pharma Scorecard to initially rank new drugs and their manufacturers on the transparency of clinical trial information for those new drugs. Of the limited sample analyzed, drugmakers Gilead Sciences and Sanofi rated poorly for having a large percentage of trials that were submitted to the FDA but never made public. GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson got better grades.

As Dr. Joseph Ross, one of Miller’s co-authors, told the Washington Post:

“To me the right number is 100 percent; if you’re selling a product on the U.S. market, the public and the clinical science community has a right to be able to review the results.”

We interviewed Miller at the Stanford METRICS conference, “Improving Biomedical Research 2015.” Here is the third of three podcasts coming out of that conference (the others were with John Ioannidis and Brian Nosek):

News coverage of the Good Pharma Scorecard:

How Pharma Keeps a Trove of Drug Trials Out of Public View
The Washington Post Wonkblog

Drugmakers Kept One-Third of Trial Results Secret, Study Finds
Bloomberg News

Study Finds Big Pharma Skirts Laws, Ethical Standards in Keeping Trial Data Secret
Boston Business Journal

Gilead, Sanofi Would Tank in Bioethics International’s New Good Pharma Scorecard
MedCity News

Gilead, Sanofi Singled Out As Worst Offenders In Failing To Disclose Trial Data
FierceBiotech

Pharmaceutical Scorecard Shames Giants Over Research Cover-ups
The Australian

Disclosure: Miller’s work has received a grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, which also supports HealthNewsReview.org

And thanks to The National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation for providing us with a grant to produce these podcasts.

Credit: podcast editor Cristeta Boarini

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