Fostering Public Trust: The Ethical Mandate for Trial Diversity and Open Access to Results in the UK Clinical Trials Market
Description: The strength of the UK Clinical Trials Market rests on its commitment to non-market principles, specifically the ethical imperative to enroll diverse participant cohorts and ensure the transparent, timely publication of all trial results to benefit public knowledge.
The ethical foundation of clinical research in the UK demands that trial populations reflect the diversity of the patient population the medicine or device is intended to serve. A lack of diversity—based on age, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status—can lead to biased findings and treatments that are less effective or potentially harmful for underrepresented groups. The regulatory bodies, including the MHRA and Research Ethics Committees (RECs), bear the responsibility of scrutinizing recruitment strategies to ensure genuine efforts are made to remove systemic barriers and build trust within all communities.
A parallel non-market issue of…