Pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical services are vital for health systems.

They can prevent or delay

health conditions that require more costly care and they can substitute for less cost-effective
interventions. Pharmaceuticals are a critical complement to other types of health care services to
reduce morbidity and mortality rates and enhance quality of life. At the same time, the drug
business sustains many individual and corporate livelihoods and produces handsome returns for
those involved in the trade.
Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small
numbers of unrepresentative patients, referred to as paid volunteers, and analyses using
techniques which are flawed by design, in such a way that they exaggerate the benefits of
treatments. Unsurprisingly, these trials tend to produce results that favour the manufacturer. When
trials throw up results that disadvantage the companies, they are perfectly entitled to hide them
from doctors and patients, thus giving them a distorted picture of any drugs true effects. Regulators
have access to most of the trial data, but only from early on in a drugs life, and even then, they do
not communicate the information to the public. In the end, even the academic papers, which
everyone thinks of as objective, are often covertly planned and written by people who work directly
for the corporations, without disclosure.
This is the serious global business of health, affecting every single person. Our delegations cannot
allow the behaviour of the pharmaceutical industry to swing on a pendulum, one moment dismal,
one moment acceptable, oscillating wildly in different companies at different times, with the
chances of getting proper data forever at the whim of whether the person at the top is kind.
The world needs clear regulations, with clear public auditing, to ensure that compliance is tested,
and documented. Furthermore, there is a need for it to be applied muscularly, to everyone, without
exception. Moreover, we need to prevent badly designed trials from ever being run in the first place.
We need to ensure that all trials report their results within a year at the very latest; we need to
measure compliance with that and to administrate extremely stiff penalties for companies who
transgress. When it comes to disseminating evidence, we need to make sure it is done cleanly, so
that doctors, patients and commissioners of health services have easy access to unbiased summaries
of information.
The pharmaceutical industry remains a jewel in the UKs scientific and industrial crown. Britains
future economic prosperity depends on fostering strong, vigorous and well-supported knowledgeintensive industries. By most measures, the pharmaceutical sector is Britains most successful
research-based industry. Indeed, pharmaceutical companies, such as GlaxoSmithKline or
AstraZeneca add more economic value than any other sector, which is exactly why the UK approach
to healthcare innovation needs to evolve in order to safeguard its global leadership.
Consequently, the UK fully supports all international efforts for solving this major situation,
reaffirms its readiness for an active role and declares its position for needable openness,
cooperation and pragmatism that the international community can assist in a satisfactory conclusion
to this problem.