Who's telling truth about Tamiflu after latest study of trial data

Researchers who fought for years to get full data on Roche's flu medicine Tamiflu said last week that governments who stockpiled it were wasting billions of dollars on a drug whose effectiveness was in doubt.

Supporters of Tamiflu said the researchers' conclusions were flawed and insisted the drug was both safe and effective. The row has drawn in the drug maker as well as industry regulators and independent scientists.

The dispute over the benefits of Tamiflu, and to a lesser extent of GlaxoSmithKline's flu drug Relenza, blew up with the joint publication by the Cochrane Review research network and the British Medical Journal of an analysis of trial data that found no good evidence for claims the drugs cut hospital admissions or reduced complications.

It mainly found the medicines had few if any beneficial effects, but did have previously dismissed or overlooked adverse side effects.

"Remember, the idea of a drug is that the benefits should exceed the harms," said Carl Heneghan, a lead investigator with the Cochrane review and a professor of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University. "So if you can't find any benefits, that accentuates the harms."

But Roche, which has been under fire for several years over its refusal to allow the Cochrane team unrestricted access to Tamiflu data, rejected the findings, saying it "fundamentally disagrees with the overall conclusions" of their study.