Ten years of investigative journalism

2009-10—Tamiflu

Our investigation1 highlighted the fact that billions of dollars had been spent by governments on stockpiling influenza drugs during the global pandemic in 2009 but without any independent analysis of the underlying clinical trial data that showed the drugs worked as advertised. Our story followed the efforts of a Cochrane review team2 that was unable to access unpublished trial data for the neuraminidase inhibitors oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza). This led to a promise from oseltamivir’s manufacturer Roche to release the data, a promise the company did not initially keep. We launched our first Open Data campaign to keep the matter in the public spotlight. This helped galvanise a …