The chairman of the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has said that if Roche were found to have withheld relevant data on its drug oseltamivir (Tamiflu) the company’s medical director at the time of the submission to NICE could be reported to the General Medical Council.

Michael Rawlins was responding to a letter from the BMJ’s editor in chief, Fiona Godlee, in which she asked NICE to withdraw its guidance on oseltamivir until it “has received and reviewed the full clinical trial data.” The request was the latest move in the BMJ’s open data campaign (bmj.com/tamiflu), which aims to persuade Roche to honour the promise it made almost three years ago to make key trial data on oseltamivir available for independent scrutiny.

In her letter Godlee said that …