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Cancer Research For 10 Yrs Useless: Fraud, Says Mayo Clinic
Cancer Research of 10 Years Useless: Fraudulent Studies, Says Mayo Clinic
Lancet’s editor calls fraudulent medical research a ‘scar on the moral body of science’. But it’s really just part of an entire system of fraud in medicine.Medical science is rampant with fraud. At the Mayo Clinic, ten years of research that appeared to be leading towards harnessing the immune system to fight cancer is worthless because of fraudulent studies and later research based on the fraudulent ones.
Retraction of medical research papers is at an all-time high. Though error was cited at a 3 to 1 rate over fraud, one must seriously question whether simple error is the primary reason. After all, these studies are peer-reviewed. They are supposed to have passed rigorous examination. But, what’s the reality?
Of course, as Gaia Health readers have seen over and over, the reality is that flaws in much of medical research are blatant. Often, merely examining a study, instead of taking it at face value, demonstrates that the conclusions are not supported by the evidence.
Nonetheless, those same studies are cited as evidence of efficacy of drugs and procedures. Even after papers have been retracted, the impression they’ve given doesn’t disappear. Research based on those papers is already designed and in process.
Doctors are loathe to change their practices on the basis of bad studies. Changes are made more readily as new drugs and procedures are advocated, not as old ones are discredited. Just take a look at doctors’ continuing to prescribe bisphonates for the nonexistent disease, osteopenia (pre-osteoporosis), and hormone replacement therapy for another nonexistent disease, menopause—or even the routine prescribing of fever-reducing drugs, which is nearly always counter-productive.
Does Better Error Detection Explain the Retractions?
Some medical journals are claiming that they’re better at detecting errors, implying that there really isn’t an increase in fraudulent papers. That explanation simply doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. They offer no explanation as to what might make them better at detecting errors now. In other words, the august journals are basing the claim on absolutely nothing but wishful thinking.
Worse, some are claiming that the advent of plagiarism software explains it. But how does finding plagiarism in papers explain fraudulent studies?
The simple fact is that they’re finding more fraudulent studies because they’re actually looking for them. And not as a result of their own internal reviews, but because of fraud scandals that reached mainstream media.
Why So Much Fraud in Medical Studies?
There is a tremendous amount to be gained by getting away with fraud in medical studies. The reason is simple. According to Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet:
A single paper in Lancet and you get your chair and you get your money. It’s your passport to success.
It’s all about money. Get published in a major medical journal and your future is made. Most peer reviewers are doing their own studies. That’s what makes them peers. They want to be able to publish. Therefore, they are not particularly inclined to make more than perfunctory negative comments. Obviously, they don’t want to alienate the authors of papers, since they either are or hope to become published themselves.
Peer review is a farce. The only kind of review that makes real sense is professional independent reviewers. Yet, for decades we’ve had peer review trotted out as the be-all and end-all in determining the legitimacy of papers. It’s been unquestioned, while a little examination of the concept demonstrates that it’s nearly certain to result in fraudulent work being passed as good science.
Fraud Is a Scar on Science
Richard Horton says that this fraud “is a scar on the moral body of science.” That’s certainly true. How many patients have been harmed? We’ll likely never know, as these examples show:
- Vioxx, the pain medication that causes heart attacks.
- The deeply flawed statin studies that hide the adverse effects, not to mention lack of efficacy.
- The antidepressant and antipsychotic studies that have hidden adverse effects and lack of efficacy, too.
- The misguided studies on salt that continue to claim that lower salt intake needs to pushed, when the opposite is probably true. In most people, there is a direct relationship between salt intake and death rates. The lower the salt intake, the greater the death rate, as demonstrated by a good study published in JAMA.
Even the system that’s supposed to control fraud in studies before they ever reach the stage of publication is corrupt, as documented in this sting operation. The fraud is systemic, from the start of drug trials that are financed directly and indirectly by Big Pharma, to the competition among researchers hoping to make their first million, to the journals that accept the fraudulent reports, using an obviously biased system of peer review to hide behind and financed almost totally by Big Pharma ads, to the doctors who choose to blindly accept whatever the journal reports say because it’s easy, gives them cover, and also brings patients to them.
Signifying the Inherent Corruption in Conventional Medicine
Yes, this is the system of evidence that conventional medicine claims justifies its existence. Instead, it demonstrates that conventional medicine is anything but evidence-based. There is no sound basis for most of modern medicine’s treatments, as should certainly be obvious with the constantly increasing rate of chronic disease.
Take a look at the advent of drug resistant diseases, which are growing rampant and often far more virulent. Or look at the false claims of disease eradication through vaccines, when any rational look at the evidence shows that it’s not modern medicine we need to thank, but adequate food, good water, and good sanitation systems. Consider the advent of a new kind of whooping cough, 10 times more virulent than the old version and caused by the vaccine itself, while being blamed on the unvaccinated!
Even when there has been apparent success, we often find that it’s short-lived and has presented us with worse problems than the ones apparently resolved.
We are, indeed, entering a brave new world of conventional medicine. Unfortunately, the ones who need to be brave are the patients, because they’re going to need every bit of resource and resilience they can find to avoid being little more than recipients of whatever modern medicine’s pseudo-science manages to spew forth.
While Dr. Horton’s comment about fraudulent studies being a “scar on the moral body of science” is true, the whole truth is far more disheartening. The entire system of conventional medicine has become a scar on the psyche and soma of humans.
By Heidi Stevenson
http://gaia-health.com/articles501/000510-drug-study-corruption.shtml
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I want to read the JAMA editorial that is cited in the beginning of this article. I have done an on-line search of the publication, but find no editorial matching the description of it in the article. Please let me know the citation so that I can read it for myself. Thank you.
What is the end result of all this fraud? Death….death to many thousands of people! My feeling is, if you want to solve the problem, round up all the frausters, up and down the chain, prosecute them as the murderers that they technically are for each death they have caused due to their lies!!! What do we do with convicted murderers….we stick them where the sun don’t shine or depending on the amount of deaths, give them the chair!!! They are no better than the worst mass murderers in history, except they hide behind a veil of legitimacy! C’mon America….grow a backbone and stand up for what’s right!
What is the end result of all this fraud? Death….death to many thousands of people! My feeling is, if you want to solve the problem, round up all the fraudsters – up and down the chain – prosecute them as the murderers that they technically are for each death they have caused due to their lies!!! What do we do with convicted murderers….we stick them where the sun don’t shine or depending on the amount of deaths, give them the chair!!! They are no better than the worst mass murderers in history, except they hide behind a veil of legitimacy! C’mon America….grow a backbone and stand up for what’s right!
I wondered if the Editor of JAMA – whose name waa not disclosed – claimed the 10 years of research fraud or was it The Mayo Clinic?
I’m totally aware of how much research fraud exists – with many whose income depends – on the outcome of research. It is a very sad situation that money is the motivating factor in most research being done – not the promotion of better health in mankind.
After 50 years of pure, unsupported research, I am sharing information based on true results. I would have to disagree with the opinion on salt in the above article. The sodium standards have been raised exceedingly high by the food manufacturers in order to sell more processed food. We need very little sodium in order to be healthy, but we do need a daily source of trace minerals.
Iodized salt is not the way to go – and food manufacturers are not paying for a better quality sodium, which doesn’t contain additives. Paying for ultra high priced sodium is not the answer either. It would be better to eat foods, which contain natural sodium, such as celery. At 77 my blood pressure is 10o/60. I can run a mile and walk 5 to 7 miles daily. Others who are avoiding excess sodium are living long and healthy lives.
In the 70′s the nutritionists whose books I read claimed that 400 mg daily was sufficient. Today the standard is around 2500 mg. This is one of the contributing factors in helping Americans spend more money on medical care than any other country.
The Mayo Clinic never made such a statement. This article is a fraud.
I would like to know why people are so stupid as to donate more and more to the very organizations who are making all this money. Are people that stupid they do not understand, money goes in the pocketbooks of those employed. The money only goes for more drugs, which ultimately kill the patient.
We need to have the Supreme Court look into this fraud. If they are punished, instead of a slap on the wrist, maybe fraudlent studies won’t happen so much. They need a deep fine that will hurt their profits, and then maybe some good will come out of these studies. Better yet, get researchers who are not connected to the FDA and the drug companies, then we will see what these studies actually prove.
Mayo does not say this. Where is the link? Lies….
Looks like this poorly referenced article is related to an article in the Wall Street Journal online (a Rupert Murdock publication, don’t you know). The article, “Mistakes in Scientific Studies Surge” is also poorly referenced, mentions the “decade of cancer research” at the Mayo Clinic went “down the drain” after they had concluded that a study the research was apparently based on was fraudulent – I couldn’t find any reference or verification of this elsewhere.
Dr. Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, is credited with the quote, “a scar on the moral body of science”. Hope this helps.
It’s not just about money; it’s also about the system. Of course, that IS the system, I guess.
And it is not just about how many patients have been harmed by fraudulent peer-reviewed studies. It is also about how many patients have NOT been helped when they could have been because Big Pharma wants to control the money to be made from products not yet “approved” by the medical establishment as a whole.
Doctors may know medicine, but I know my body, and myself, better than any doctor. I can make my own decisions for myself, and I do claim that right.
Brenda Denzler – Go to the original article, http://gaia-health.com/articles501/000510-drug-study-corruption.shtml, and you’ll find all the references listed there after the article.
James – You are sorta-kinda right. The statement about a scar on the face of medical science is a direct quote from Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, not JAMA. Sorry about the slip.
But, it’s certainly no credit to JAMA that their editor didn’t make the comment.
One of the biggest frauds are the MS Drugs. Ten year studies show that they don’t work any better than placebo, yet they are being prescribed at an alarming rate, in spite of horrific and deadly side effects.
Think about it. Drugs are only available in the relapsing remitting phase and claim to slow progression and reduce the number of relapses. Given the unpredictable nature of the disease in this phase and the fact that no 2 MS patients are alike, how do they quantify this?
You can be sure that pharma’s enticements to prescribe these poisons is very generous indeed.
Little or no true research has been done in the past 10 years. Big Pharma’s interest is in trying to rearrange, combine, etc. chemical structures of common elements so they can get a patent.
Cancer ‘cures’ exist, but ‘it is not economically feasible’ to cure cancer. Pathetic, but true. The one thing patients can do for themselves is to search out alternative doctors and stay away from the surgery, chemo and radiation.
What I don’t understand is why people subject themselves to medical treatment in the first place. Not even in America are people force-marched to the doctor’s surgery on a monthly basis. Yet, there they go.
When I grew up doctors believed: “First do no harm” which means he did not prescribe ANYTHING until he knew exactly what you were suffering from. In the mean time the only treatment you received was mom making you as comfortable as possible, keeping the fever down with cold compresses, etc. There was a good likelihood that the doctor never established what was wrong with you and you just got better with mom’s loving care.
Now people demand that the doctor treats them, and their children, with prescriptions for every sneeze.
And then they complain about Big Pharma? WTF?
jama.ama-assn.org/content/305/17/1777 is the link to the abstract. The problem is not the validity of the study about salt. The problem is the perception of fraud in research. Not just research in medicine; research in general. For instance, the LHC failed to find the “God particle”. Now, the same people, who lead us on that wild goose chase, want to lead us on a chase to tear space apart with lasers, saying, “But we’ll learn all about everything!” Yeah, right, NOT. The emporer named Science is seen more and more to have no clothes. Too bad it had to end like this; science had a lot of promise at the beginning. Now, it’s just another scam.