The Corruption of Evidence Based Medicine — Killing for Profit

2022-03-14 • SEND FEEDBACK |

Related: ethics in medicine, gears of the machine, SARS-CoV-2 aka COVID-19 aka Coronavirus

re: ethics in medicine
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re: Fauci’s War on Science: The Smoking Gun
re: How Well do Doctors Understand Probability?
re: How to understand scientific studies (in health and medicine)
re: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

Legislation could fix many of these problems overnight, but medical companies are big donors to politicians.

The Corruption of Evidence Based Medicine — Killing for Profit

2018-04-18, by Dr Jason Fung

The idea of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) is great. The reality, though, not so much. Human perception is often flawed, so the premise of EBM is to formally study medical treatments and there have certainly been some successes.

...

So, why do prominent physicians call EBM mostly useless? The 2 most prestigious journals of medicine in the world are The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine. Richard Horton, editor in chief of The Lancet said this in 2015

“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue”

Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of NEJM wrote in 2009 that,

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor”

This has huge implications. Evidence based medicine is completely worthless if the evidence base is false or corrupted... Dr. Relman another former editor in chief of the NEJM said this in 2002

“The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful”

...Research is almost always paid for by pharmaceutical companies. But studies done by industry are well known to have positive results far more frequently. Trials run by industry are 70% more likely than government funded trials to show a positive result. Think about that for a second. If EBM says that 2+2 = 5 is correct 70% of the time, would you trust this sort of ‘science’?

Selective Publication — Negative trials (those that show no benefit for the drugs) are likely to be suppressed....

Rigging of Outcomes ... In 2000, the government moved to stop these shenanigans. They required companies to register what they were measuring ahead of time. Prior to 2000, 57% of trials showed a positive result. After 2000, a paltry 8% showed good results...

‘Advertorials’ — ...not only did the drug companies pay lots of consulting fees to the doctors, three of the authors of this review were full time employees! To allow an advertorial to be published as the best scientific fact is scandalous. Doctors, trusting the NEJM to publish quality, unbiased advice have no idea that this review article is pure advertising...

Money from Reprints — ...it’s insanely profitable for journals to take money from Big Pharma... Who needs journalistic ethics when there’s a Mercedes in the driveway?

Bribery of Journal Editors — A recent study by Liu et al in the BMJ shed more light on the problem of crooked journals... Of all journal editors that could be assessed, 50.6% were on the take.... other particularly corrupt journals include: JAMA, JACC, J Clinical Oncology, J Infectious Disease, Diabetes Care, JAMA Internal Med... with 35 editors, that’s about $15 million in bribes to doctors.... Mo money = we’ll publish your crooked studies for you.

Publication Bias — The evidence base that EBM depends upon is completely biased...
If all the studies that don’t look promising for drug candidates are not published, then it appears that the drugs are way way more effective than they really are. But the published ‘evidence base’ would falsely support the drug. Indeed, Pharma sponsored trials were 5 times more likely to be unpublished.

Financial conflicts of interest (COI), also known as gifts to doctors, is a well accepted practice. A national survey in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007 shows that 94% of physicians had ties to the pharmaceutical industry... There is a simple relationship between how prominent a physician is (more articles published — almost always academic doctors and professors) and how much money they take from Big Pharma. Mo prominent = mo money. Further, there is a ‘clear and strong link’ between taking industry money and minimizing the risk of side effects of medications...

So here’s a damning list of all the problems of EBM

Selective Publication

Rigged outcomes

Advertorials

Reprint Revenues

Bribery of Journal Editors

Publication Bias

Financial Conflicts of Interests

When the evidence base of medicine is bought and paid for, people die... End the corruption of the universities. Stop the bribery of doctors.

WIND: trust your doctor? The medical industrial complex is rotten to the core.

Even if a doctor has good intentions to start (and I sure most all do), I assert that they are far more obedient than most people, having been trained for many years to accept authoritative statements, first in school, then as a junior doctor, etc. And what after all is the average doctor going to do when the paid-off prominent “experts” dictate what is correct, what is the best protocol, etc? It’s an insurmountable struggle for most.

And if “94% of physicians had ties to the pharmaceutical industry”, you’ll have to search long and hard for a doctor with integrity.

The COVID trainwreck engineered by sociopath Anthony Fauci is only the logical outgrowth of what is detailed above. We could have expected nothing else.

The same deny/destroy/denigrate/demonize playbook for COVID is now the playbook for all areas of science and politics. THe battle has begun, led by one man. Will other courageous leaders step up? See Elon Musk's "Threat" to Restore Free Speech on Twitter Provokes Liberal Panic.