Drug makers accused of hiding clinical data

The editor of the New England Journal of Medicine attacked three of the world's biggest drug companies for "making a mockery" of industry efforts to make clinical trial results more transparent. Dr. Jeffrey Drazen said that as a result, Pfizer, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline could find their studies rejected for publication by major medical journals. The editors of medical journals have been pushing drug companies to register their trials in a public database -- clinicaltrials.gov -- but Dr. Drazen told the Los Angeles Times that the three drug companies are providing "nonsense details" in their reports.

"They are written in a way that they are trying to hide what they are doing." Dr. Drazen added that Eli Lilly and Abbott Laboratories are 90 percent compliant. A spokesperson for Merck said that they were doing "everything they can" to expedite transparency.

- read this story from the Los Angeles Times for more on the remarks