Thursday, June 25, 2015

AllTrials vs Richmond Pharmacology

Dear AllTrials friend

We hoped to tell you more about the case Richmond Pharmacology is bringing against the HRA. That's not been straightforward. Richmond has now changed their argument three times and has altogether abandoned some arguments it relied upon earlier, so getting to grips with what is at stake has been difficult and time consuming for us and for our lawyers.

At the beginning of this week it looked as though Richmond had narrowed the case down to a technical argument about the wording of HRA’s guidelines which only applied for a period of 10 days earlier this year.

Just as the issues seemed to be narrowing, Richmond then asked the Court not to allow AllTrials to be heard. We had written to Richmond and the HRA outlining our planned argument to the court and inviting their response. HRA replied to us, Richmond did not. Instead they went straight to the Judge and asked him not to hear us.

And then yesterday we saw that Richmond has asked the Court at the very last minute to rule on something huge. They want the Court to declare that no trial sponsor or person running a trial has any legal requirement to publicly register any clinical trial unless the sponsor has given a legally binding commitment to do so, or an ethics committee has asked them to do so for every trial. So now the Court is being asked to rule not on the specifics of the case but on a much broader point.

Richmond has asked the Court for a hastily arranged hearing in Manchester on Monday where they will ask to seek that declaration as part of the case. This is after they have warned the court that AllTrials' references to international rules and protocols are irrelevant and will only add to their costs!

We need to be there on Monday to make it clear to the Court that it is being asked to rule on something that has real ramifications beyond this case. If Richmond win, this would go in the face of international laws, regulations, professional standards and the ethical rules of research. If such a declaration was made it would shatter the progress towards transparency made by AllTrials and the progress made internationally before AllTrials even started.

Today we are writing our submission to the Court to be allowed to speak on Monday. We’ll tell you more as soon as we know it. We have only been able to do this because hundreds of you have sent support, encouragement and donations. Thank you.

Best wishes
James

James Cockerill
Campaigns Manager

Sense About Science
Science and evidence in the hands of the public

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