Widespread Ghostwriting of Drug Trials Means "Scientific" Credibility of Pharmaceutical Industry is

Widespread Ghostwriting of Drug Trials Means "Scientific" Credibility of Pharmaceutical Industry is

Bravo from Health Lover, Ilena Rosenthal

* ilena-rosenthal.blogspot . com

* w w w .naturalnews . com /023074.html


(NaturalNews) The discovery that drug companies have been ghostwriting
scientific studies using in-house writers, then paying (bribing)
doctors and high-level academics to pretend they were the author of
the article is making shockwaves across conventional medicine. This
latest revelation of scientific fraud exposes a massive, widespread
system of fraud involving not only the drug companies, but also
hundreds of different peer-reviewed, "scientific" medical journals
that have published these ghostwritten articles. This scam is the
latest embarrassment to conventional medicine; a system built on such
a foundation of scientific fraud that the admission of dishonesty no
longer surprises anyone. The pharmaceutical industry, it seems, is now
supported almost entirely by fraudulent science fabricated by
marketing personnel.

Remember, it is these studies -- the very ones now discovered to be
ghostwritten by Big Pharma's in-house authors -- that the FDA uses to
approve these drugs, unleashing them onto the public where potentially
hundreds of millions of doses of the drug may be sold in just the
first few years of its approval. But what we're learning now is that
the whole system is an elaborate scam. For these studies, there's no
real science involved at all.

To back this up, let me explain how this scam works in seven simple
steps:

Step 1: A drug company runs an in-house study (using fraudulent study
design from the start) to "prove" that their drug is both safe and
effective. If the study produces negative results, it is thrown out.
If it produces positive results, proceed to step 2.

Step 2: That same drug company uses in-house writers ("ghost writers")
to write up the results of the study in a favorable light by
discarding any data that doesn't fit the desired outcome. Note that
these in-house writers are marketing people, not doctors or
scientists, and they are on Big Pharma's payroll!

Step 3: The drug company contacts a noted doctor or academic and
offers to pay them a bribe (a "writing fee") to put their name on the
paper as if they were the original author. In reality, the paper has
already been completely written and the doctor needs to write nothing.

Step 4: The paper is submitted to peer-reviewed academic journals
(such as JAMA) for publication. Since the paper appears to have been
independently written by an outside scientist or doctor, the journal
is far more likely to consider it credible. Thus, it gets more easily
published. The drug company reveals nothing about the true origins of
the paper.

Step 5: The drug company that sponsored all this forwards the
peer-reviewed, published study to the FDA, claiming this is now
"scientific fact" that proves their drug is both safe and effective.
Since the study was published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, it
must be true, right?

Step 6: The FDA, which conducts no drug safety studies of its own,
automatically believes the conclusions of the study (since it was
published in a credible journal, after all), and therefore approves
the drug for sale! From there, the FDA claims its decisions are based
on the "gold standard of evidence-based medicine!"

Step 7: Once the drug is approved by the FDA, the drug company then
claims the drug has been declared safe and effective by an independent
government agency, and therefore the drug must indeed be both safe and
effective. In other words, even though the drug company fabricated
much of the evidence used by the FDA to make their approval decision,
the drug company still claims that the FDA's decision is an
independent, science-based approval of their drug! Furthermore, the
drug companies are now arguing that FDA approval should immunize them
from any lawsuits or claims of harm stemming from their drugs.
Amazing, huh?

From here, doctors are medical personnel are taught that the drug is
backed by good science and that the FDA has independently reviewed the
evidence and approved the drug. Therefore, it's safe to prescribe to
patients. What nobody has been told, however, is that the entire
process -- from the drug studies to drug approvals -- was fabricated!

Or, put another way, as long as ghostwriting is tolerated in
conventional medicine, the pharmaceutical industry has lost all
credibility and is now clearly based on science fraud and marketing
gimmicks, not genuine evidence. And remember, ghostwriting is not a
new issue. It's been going on for decades. The only thing new about
this issue is that it has been exposed in once-secret court documents
that just happened to come out during a recent Merck trial.

Medical Journals Should Retract All Ghostwritten Articles
NaturalNews is now calling for all peer-reviewed medical journals to
determine the true authorship of all scientific articles they've
published over the last ten years and retract all ghostwritten
articles.

That would be quite a list, likely involving tens of thousands of
published studies. The medical journals, of course, won't bother with
that process. You know why? Because just like the drug companies,
they'd rather sweep their scientific fraud under the rug than admit
they've been played by Big Pharma or participated in a massive
campaign of scientific fraud that now calls into question the
credibility of virtually all medical journals (except for PLoS
Medicine, of course, which remains independent and honest).

You see, all the big players were in on this scam: The drug companies,
the medical journals, the FDA, the researchers and even the doctors
and academics who accepted as much as $25,000 per study to slap their
name on a paper already written by Big Pharma's in-house marketing
writers. I guess credibility is cheap in conventional medicine. The
entire reputation of a doctor can be purchased for as little as
$10,000. Similarly, the integrity of the entire industry can be bought
with Big Pharma's dollars. There's nothing in modern pharmaceutical
medicine that isn't for sale... not even scientific credibility.

The FDA Should Retract its Approval of All Drugs Based on Ghostwritten
Studies
Think about this: The evidence used by the FDA to approve drugs is now
known to be tainted. If this were a state or federal court, that
evidence would be thrown out as being "inadmissible." But at the FDA,
there's no such thing as pro-drug evidence that's too tainted to
accept as fact. (There are truly zero standards for scientific
evidence at the FDA, at least with the top decision makers. They can
accept any piece of fraudulent evidence as fact, no matter how
"poisoned" the evidence might be.)

Based on what we now know, the FDA needs to retract its approval of
numerous drugs that were approved based on ghostwritten papers. In
other words, if the FDA's original approval of these drugs was based
on scientific fraud, then the FDA needs to rectify the situation and
withdraw the approval of those drugs until proper studies can be
conducted.

Will the FDA engage in such retractions? Of course not. There's not
motivation to do so. The FDA isn't interested in good science or
protecting the public. It's only interested in boosting Big Pharma's
profits using whatever methods of collusion, corruption and scientific
fraud it can get away with.

I say that if the FDA refuses to retract the approvals of drugs based
on ghostwritten studies, the FDA has zero remaining credibility and
has abandoned anything resembling "evidence-based medicine." In other
words, the FDA is a willing partner in this widespread campaign of
scientific fraud, and even when the fraud is discovered, the FDA does
nothing to attempt to reestablish scientific credibility. Real
science, it seems, has zero priority at the FDA.

The Pharmaceutical Racket
So now we have Big Pharma, the FDA and the top medical journals all
engaged in a massive conspiracy to deceive the public, to win approval
for dangerous drugs, and to prop up the pharmaceutical industry with
fabricated evidence on drug safety that was actually written by Big
Pharma's in-house marketing writers. This is clearly a grand
pharmaceutical racket, operated much like a system of organized crime.
Except these criminals, it seems, have not yet been arrested and
charged with any crimes. (That day is coming, however...)

Now I ask you this: How stupid are doctors if they still believe in
all this fabricated evidence? Because I've met a lot of M.D.s who
believe so strongly in the "evidence" behind pharmaceuticals that
they'll argue your ears off about the science of pharmaceuticals vs.
the "wishful thinking" of nutritional supplements. It makes you wonder
just how gullible doctors really are. (In truth, they're incredibly
gullible. All it takes is a visit by a young, bubbly drug rep wearing
a push-up bra to radically alter the brand-name drug prescribing
habits of a typical M.D.)

And how gullible are patients who believe Big Pharma or the FDA? To
believe in this system of fraudulent "junk" science and manipulated
clinical trials is downright foolish. And yet hundreds of millions of
Americans take pharmaceuticals every single day -- drugs that make
them no healthier and that, in fact, may harm them or kill them.

Folks, it is time for the United States of America to wake up and
realize we've all been conned by Big Pharma. We've been hoodwinked by
a band of clever hucksters sporting academic degrees and
authoritative-sounding titles. We've been had. Let us now end this
foolishness by retracting all published studies based on fraudulent
ghostwriting, retracting all FDA-approved drugs based on these
fraudulent studies, and prosecuting the top pharmaceutical companies
for the widespread fraud they have so cleverly designed and unleashed
in pursuit of the almighty dollar. It is time to invoke established
federal anti-trust laws and go after these companies, putting them out
of business once and for all and thereby saving countless American
children, adults and senior citizens from death by dangerous
pharmaceuticals.