The crisis in Cochrane: Evidence Debased Medicine.

The mission of the Cochrane Collaboration, established in 1993, was to systematically review medical evidence with a view to producing the best quality and trustworthy evidence. Twenty-five years later, it is in a crisis that centres on the dismissal one of its founders and the question of access to clinical trial data. The original mission aimed at improving health. In the face of stalling life expectancies, the stakes in the current crisis could not be higher. This essay looks at the crisis in the context of the disastrous effects of medication for paediatric depression on children as a consequence of the suppression of adverse findings from clinical trials.