If we are to detect harms early and protect the public’s health while ensuring the availability of effective new therapies, systematic reporting of safety outcomes from all clinical trials must be available. In the current Archives of Internal Medicine, Isabelle Pitrou and colleagues (FREE) review the reporting of safety data in randomized, controlled trials published during 2006 in the major journals. Their findings are disappointing but not unexpected. Adverse events were unreported in 11% of 133 articles. Most seriously, data on severe adverse events or adverse-event-prompted study withdrawal were missing in… Continue Reading

I am a creature of routine and order, and therefore don’t do very well with Southwest Airlines’ lack of seat assignment. Not so long ago, during a business trip to San Antonio, I was looking at my group C boarding pass and wondering if there would be any room for my carry-on luggage, or if I was going to have to sit in the last row of the airplane. As it turned out, both my fears became reality. Not the end of the world, but what came next was something… Continue Reading