From GSK’s More Than Medicine blog:

‘Not surprisingly, there was a lot of chatter about this announcement online today.

Katie Thomas (@katie_thomas) of the New York Times wrote « Glaxo Opens the Door to Data on Research. » Matthew Herper (@matthewherper) of Forbes wrote about the announcement–« With Transparency Pledge, Glaxo Makes Promises No Other Drug Company Has »–and then tweeted it. This started a rich discussion about our motivation for doing this. Sally Church (@MaverickNY) wrote « @matthewherper it doesn’t jive with the general ethos really. If it truly changes things then great but… leopards, spots etc. » There were a number of tweeters who had similar skepticism.

And we get it. Trust me. The pharma industry, and GSK, are often criticized, no matter how genuine our intentions. This is something we know we need to overcome.

But I think [Sir Andrew Witty] outlined our motivations best:

« As a truly global healthcare company, I believe we have a responsibility to do all we can at GSK to use our resources, knowledge and expertise to help tackle serious global health challenges. However, the complexity of the science and the scale of the challenge mean that we cannot solve these problems alone. We need to take a different approach–one focused on partnership, collaboration and openness. By being more open with our clinical trial data, we also hope to help further scientific understanding. I am pleased with the progress we have made so far to evolve our business model but we recognise there is more we can do and the new initiatives outlined today will enable us to build on this work. »

We expect to have our feet held to the fire on this, to ensure that we deliver on our promises. Let’s keep the conversation going.’

[AS: I’m pleased to see the momentum kept up on this issue, and it’s great to see Sally Church (@MaverickNY) getting mentioned here. Transparency, commitment and action are clearly going to be the best response to (understandable) skepticism.

A recap of my POV on this: http://bit.ly/QlAJdv]

See on www.morethanmedicine.us.gsk.com