-the following article appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer during the 2006 DIA Conference:

 

Please stop calling them drug 'trials'

Participation rates in clinical trials, uh, research studies have dropped, and the industry blames news media and legal woes.

By Thomas Ginsberg

Inquirer Staff Writer

 

The $10-billion-a-year clinical-drug-trial business kindly asks you to forget part of its name.

 

That would be the trial part. The industry, holding its annual meeting in Philadelphia this week, is trying to raise U.S. participation rates in drug studies and combat what some call negative news coverage of pharmaceutical development and marketing, notably its legal troubles. And surveys suggest trial just isn't helping.

 

"People view trial as litigious," said Christine K. Pierre, a patient-recruitment consultant and speaker at the weeklong convention of the Drug Information Association, a global industry clearinghouse with headquarters in Horsham. "Stop calling it a trial and your enrollment will increase."

 

 

 

Investigative Sites Want Sponsors to Fund Preliminary Trial Research

June 16, 2005

 

Published by FDAnews

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Such sites are carrying out “prestudy” research analyses that can cost them as much as $10,000 before they see the first patient in a given trial, according to RxTrials, a clinical research organization that conducts trial services in the Greater Washington and Baltimore region. Staff at RxTrials recently completed a cost analysis and estimated that investigative sites in the Washington/Baltimore area spend on average $9,055 to cover pre-study assessment costs for each trial they conduct.

 

Full article here.