New Romantics FB3 actually wrote this about Thatcher-era Britain so the soundtrack doesn’t warrant linking, but the title suffices to illustrate a theme. In the mid-60s Canadian cystic fibrosis patients were entered onto a tracking registry, and other countries followed suit. The US foundation extracted outcome reports and used it to rank treatment centers, and the UK NHS mandates recording of all clinic attendance thus facilitating cross-country reporting. The best practice evidence revealed in this way is certainly less biased than any Cochrane review, since it’s also completely non-selective.
A more commercially oriented registry has been built at the for-profit PLM described here a few months ago. An FAQ encourages sufferers to ‘donate their data’ towards finding a cure, and this raises the intriguing idea of their vested interest overriding concerns about case confidentiality.

It’s not such a new idea. Grand rounds are a tradition in teaching hospitals, and case studies or series present de-identified but intimate details for elucidation of a condition. They’re win-win situations. Research institutions can also bend privacy rules to their own means – such as through ‘opt-off’ implied consent. Registries.org.au shows the benefit of, and reliance upon full capture of clinical care outcomes for quality monitoring.

On the other hand, requests to the Director of Grants at NHMRC for the identities of reviewers approving research funding applications (in order to scrutinize for conflicts-of-interest) are denied – using as disclaimer “confidentiality of applications and that (sic) all personal information is dealt with in accordance with our obligations under the Privacy Act”. Their oxymoronic Principles of Peer Review of articles 2 “All stages of peer review are transparent” and 6 “Participants respect that confidentiality is important to the fairness and robustness of peer review” contradiction is exposed when a falsified report is challenged, posted in detail here. For anyone wishing to draw on a correlation between mental health and chronic pain, for all eternity, that study can be cited. The artificial construct of epidemic mental illness results in inadequate treatment available to those genuinely suffering, and a pill-popping panacea instead of fruitful therapy.

Similarly secret, we are invariably blinded to identities of the peers for a peer-reviewed journal. The commercial imperatives of publishing have been exposed by luminaries such as the BMJ editor, who, following a quarter of a century as chief executive wrote in open-source PLoS: ‘Medical Journals Are an Extension of the Marketing Arm of Pharmaceutical Companies’. Studies on the peer review process also show this form of governance is a fallacy. It seems to have been lost that the purpose of research is to improve outcomes, and that the data belongs to the patient rather than their drug dealer. Ownership has underpinned the ethical guideline of ‘beneficence’ instituted after Nuremberg, and accountability was promised by the institution when informed consent is granted by study participants.  That consent can’t be withdrawn posthumously if it doesn’t work out as expected.
Militant united voices can redress the present disempowered situation, only tolerated out of the individual patient’s desperation to obtain effective treatment for which they’re handsomely rewarding their service provider. That’s my dream. The reality is that a petition to draw the attention of our Health Minister, raised on the forum representing a (conservatively) estimated 600,000 fibromites managed only a few thousand signatures. As to whether meekness, or ignorance of commercially driven bias is to blame I’d suggest the former. Even if ‘doctor’ no longer translates from the Latin ‘teacher’, their authority is nonetheless unassailable.