Clinical trial safety committees: the devil's spoon.

He who sups with the devil needs a long spoon. To cast the pharmaceutical industry in the role of the devil may seem a little unfair, but the British Biotech affair has shown all too clearly that there are times when the industry must be kept at arm's length from the development of its own drugs. This paper describes briefly the problems which beset British Biotech-reports of which have generally been confined to the financial pages of the daily press-and emphasises the need for the medical profession to recognise that the relation between drug development and patient care will always be an uneasy one.