Show me the data- want to know how good those Melanoma meds are that you are taking?

New medicines need a market authorisation before the can be sold in the EU.

It is the role of the European Medicines Agency to check and analyse the data provided by the manufacturer of the new medicine and then come to a recommendation. It is then the European Commission that grants the final authorisation- after that, a drug can be sold and bought in Europe.

This is all public, so one actually find out EXACTLY how good the drugs are one is taking- or at least the data based on which it was approved in Europe.

And it works like this-

1. go to the EMA website 'find medicines'
2. type in the name of the medicine you want to check under 'quick search' and you end up on the product page for the medicine with a general introduction and lots of more detail once you start looking.

Annoyingly, the references for the studies used are rather HARD to find.

3. so under 'product information', you find the EPAR- European Public Assessment report- that contains all the data from the studies that contributed to the approval of this medicines. Usually, more than one!

4. If you then want to read the full publication about the study, take the study name and search Pubmed - this is the reliable place to search for medical information on the internet! 

5. If the paper is open-access- you're done, just download it- if not, please post on the MPNE forum. 

.....or just ask for it directly.