As our readers know, a large percentage of clinical trials do not end up as published research - and are therefore inaccessible to prescribers, patients and the public.

The AllTrials initiative has had great success in raising awareness in Europe about the benefits of publishing the results of all clinical trials.A year ago, ecancer shared the AllTrials petition calling for all clinical trials to be registered. Now AllTrials have launched an expansion of the petition - this time, taking on the USA.

AllTrials Campaign co-founder Dr Ben Goldacre explains that the results of around half of all clinical trials are withheld from doctors, researchers, and patients.

"This makes a mockery of our efforts to make truly informed decisions," Dr Goldacre says. "It also puts the reputation of the entire medical profession—and pharma—on the line.”

“We provided our bodies, our tissue samples, our data,” says patient activist AnnaMarie Ciccarella. “I’ve heard the same sentiment expressed many times from patients in clinical trials, ‘This may not help me, but it may help another person.’ It’s time to honour that sentiment.”

“Imagine there was an election,” says Steven Woloshin MD, a professor at the Dartmouth Institute for health policy and clinical practice.

“Would you trust the results if only half of the votes were reported? Imagine if the winner of the election was the one who decided which half of the voting was reported? That would be crazy, but that’s what the situation is when trials are not reported.”

Since 2013, AllTrials has won support from almost 600 patient groups, professional societies, and academic institutions, and 85 thousand members of the public.

The global campaign now represents 500 million patients, and it has helped change the law in Europe so that, starting in 2016, all drug clinical trials will be publicly registered and their results reported.

Publishing the results of clinical trials will benefit everybody - if you're interested in publishing your own clinical findings, find out why you should submit them to ecancermedicalscience here.

ecancermedicalscience considers articles on all aspects of cancer research. ecancermedicalscience accepts clinical studies and encourages clinical trials to be registered prior to submission in a suitable publicly accessible registry.