Medical Research Council should do more in the development of gold standard for clinical trial design

More should be done to celebrate the role of one of Britain’s leading institutions, the Medical Research Council (MRC), in the development of the gold standard for clinical trial design. Sir Iain Chalmers, writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, questions the apparent reluctance of the MRC to take credit for its ground-breaking work in the design and management of randomised multicentre controlled clinical trials in the 1950s. Describing the MRC as ‘curiously silent’ about the enduring value of its role in developing the science of clinical trials, Sir Iain calls for research to gather relevant data and understand the MRC’s lukewarm response to its own success.

The MRC celebrated its centenary in 2013 yet made only brief mention in its centenary literature of its role in the development of clinical trials. A programme of MRC trials in the 1940s and 1950s gained international recognition for pioneering the gathering of scientifically robust, reliable evidence to inform clinical practice in the treatment of diseases including tuberculosis, cancer, whooping cough, pneumonia, influenza and rheumatoid arthritis.

Sir Iain, editor of the James Lind Library, which was created to help people understand fair tests of treatments in health care, said: “British clinicians and statisticians working at the Medical Research Council in the 1940s and 1950s made substantial contributions to the development of scientifically more robust study designs, including the important emergence of multicentre controlled trials. It is high time the Council made more of its achievement.”

Source: http://www.rsm.ac.uk/