Declaration of support to the All Trials Campaign
RCVS Knowledge unreservedly supports the aims of the All Trials campaign
As a funder of research and as an organisation committed to advancing veterinary knowledge, RCVS Knowledge strongly believes that access to (and dissemination of) the outcomes of clinical research are vital components of the process by which healthcare professionals - including veterinary surgeons - make informed choices about patient care. Evidence-based veterinary medicine, to which we are fully committed and which constitutes our core activity, depends on this.
The under-reporting of clinical trials, especially those resulting in neutral or negative outcomes, creates a pool of available clinical knowledge biased towards certain interventions, and potentially defrauds the expectations of patients and their carers, in both the human and animal world. It can also result in unnecessary repetition of studies, which, apart from wasting resources and time, goes against the goal of “replacing, reducing and refining” the number of animals used for scientific purposes.
At the moment, no publicly available registry of clinical trials exists for veterinary medicine, with regulation performed at national level, and mostly focusing on animals destined for the human food chain. We aim to contribute to a future where such information can be more easily shared and therefore we welcome and support advances towards that goal in human medicine, in the further hope that the goals of the All Trials campaign will be replicated in the veterinary field, and beyond.