British lawmakers on Friday criticised government spending of 424 million pounds ($702 million) to stockpile Roche’s medicine Tamiflu, saying doubts about the drug’s effectiveness suggest it may not be money well spent. Parliament’s influential Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said it was “surprised and concerned” to discover that information on methods and results of clinical trials of such prescribed drugs “is routinely withheld”, and said there was a “lack of consensus over how well Tamiflu ... actually works”. “The case for stockpiling antiviral medicines at the current level is based on judgment rather than on evidence of their effectiveness during an influenza pandemic,” said Richard Bacon, a leading member of the committee.
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