'ARCOS was a secret database which the drug industry and the federal government, specifically — wanted to keep secret. The complex civil litigation case journey of the ARCOS data into sunlight began with lawsuits by drug-ravaged communities, with the final steps through legal action. In effect, the public, as represented by local governments, had community-specific information for the purposes of the lawsuits, but those governments could not share that information with the public via the news media. “There is no validity to the Pharmaceutical Defendants’ claim that access to aggregated data is every bit as good as access to raw transactional data. If it were, then the news media would not be working so hard to get the transactional data & the DEA would not be working so hard to conceal it.” The ARCOS database is now available in a searchable format on The Washington Post’s website'
At www.washingtonpost.com
