Re­search re­vamp: UK calls on clin­i­cal tri­al spon­sors to shut down tri­als that aren't vi­able

In the wake of a pan­dem­ic marred by in­ef­fi­cient and of­ten un­co­or­di­nat­ed re­search (al­though Ox­ford’s Re­cov­ery tri­al for Covid ther­a­peu­tics served as a mod­el for the world), the UK has be­gun the tough task of try­ing to win­now down the tri­als that are still on­go­ing — to on­ly those that can or will be com­plet­ed.

The US sim­i­lar­ly be­gan wind­ing down the var­i­ous arms of the NIH’s AC­TIV tri­als (a few of which are still en­rolling) as the FDA’s Janet Wood­cock has pre­vi­ous­ly lament­ed that just 5% of the thou­sands of Covid-19 ther­a­peu­tic tri­als were ac­tu­al­ly ran­dom­ized and ad­e­quate­ly pow­ered to re­veal ac­tion­able da­ta.

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