Impact of reduced working hours on the NHS

Abstract

Many thanks indeed for your article by Grant Lewison et al. 1 and for your editorial. 2 The idea that life with advanced cancer can be prolonged at huge cost, not only financial but also in quality of life, has always seemed pointless to me, as a cancer patient myself. Grant Lewison et al. make the point that adverse events are rarely mentioned. This is still a problem even with first-line treatment, in spite of the good work done by the Cochrane Adverse Events Methods Group. The recent Cochrane Collaboration Colloquium ('Patients Included') in Edinburgh did offer a workshop on adverse events, to which I contributed, as a Cochrane 'consumer'. But we still have a long way to go before we have balanced and truthful reporting on drugs. I should like to suggest that no clinical trials should be published in medical journals unless the authors can show that patients have been members of the Trial Steering Committee, and consulted in the drafting of the report, and also that they give a full account of adverse events. 'First do no harm' should apply to researchers as well as clinicians.