A Spoonful of (Regulatory) Sugar Makes the Medicine Go Down

The UK's health secretary, Andrew Lansley, is accepting proposals for a new regulatory body that would speed up applications by scientists carrying out health research, and open up the UK — to a greater degree — to drug companies wanting to carry out clinical trials, reports The Guardian's Sarah Boseley. The body, dubbed the Health Research Agency, is a way of addressing researchers' complaints of bureaucracy in the current system — currently, researchers have to apply to different trusts in the UK's National Health Service for permission to recruit patients for studies, and they've complained that it creates long delays, Boseley says. Streamlining the process could help researchers, the British economy, and patients who might be missing out on trials of new drugs that could help them, she adds.