"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 of The New England Journal of Medicine." ---Marcia Angell, MD
"The secret of acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made." ---George Burns
The faking of medical reality is, at bottom, an operation designed to
bolster the power of the medical cartel, one of the most important
forces on the planet.
What do doctors rely on? What do medical schools rely on? What do
medical journals and mainstream medical reporters and drug companies and
the FDA rely on?
The sanctity of published clinical trials of drugs. These
trials determine whether the drugs are safe and effective. The drugs are
tested on human volunteers. The results are tabulated. The trial is
described in a paper that is printed by a medical journal.
This is science. This is rationality.
This is the rock. Without these studies, the whole field of medical research would fall apart in utter chaos.
Upon this rock, and hence through media, the public becomes aware of the
latest breakthrough, the newest medicine. Through doctors in their
offices, the public finds out what drugs they should take-and their
doctors know because their doctors have read the published reports in
the medical journals, the reports that describe the clinical trials. Or
if the doctors haven't actually read the reports, they've been told
about them.
It all goes back to this rock.
And when mainstream advocates attack so-called alternative or natural
health, they tend to mention that their own sacred profession is based
on real science, on studies, on clinical trials.
One doctor told me, "The clinical trials and published studies are what keep us from going back to the Stone Age."
So now let me quote an article in the NY Review of Books (May 12, 2011) by Helen Epstein,
"Flu Warning: Beware the Drug Companies."
"Six years ago, John Ioannidis, a professor of epidemiology at the
University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, found that nearly
half of published articles in scientific journals contained findings
that were false, in the sense that independent researchers couldn't
replicate them. The problem is particularly widespread in medical
research, where peer-reviewed articles in medical journals can be
crucial in influencing multimillion- and sometimes multibillion-dollar
spending decisions. It would be surprising if conflicts of interest did
not sometimes compromise editorial neutrality, and in the case of
medical research, the sources of bias are obvious. Most medical journals
receive half or more of their income from pharmaceutical company
advertising and reprint orders, and dozens of others [journals] are
owned by companies like Wolters Kluwer, a medical publisher that also
provides marketing services to the pharmaceutical industry."
Here's another quote from the same article:
"The FDA also relies increasingly upon fees and other payments from the
pharmaceutical companies whose products the agency is supposed to
regulate. This could contribute to the growing number of scandals in
which the dangers of widely prescribed drugs have been discovered too
late. Last year, GlaxoSmithKline's diabetes drug Avandia was linked to
thousands of heart attacks, and earlier in the decade, the company's
antidepressant Paxil was discovered to exacerbate the risk of suicide in
young people. Merck's painkiller Vioxx was also linked to thousands of
heart disease deaths. In each case, the scientific literature gave
little hint of these dangers. The companies have agreed to pay
settlements in class action lawsuits amounting to far less than the
profits the drugs earned on the market. These precedents could be
creating incentives for reduced vigilance concerning the side effects of
prescription drugs in general."
Also from the NY Review of Books, here are two quotes from Marcia
Angell, former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine,
perhaps the most prestigious medical journal in the world. (
"Drug Companies and Doctors: A Story of Corruption")
"Consider the clinical trials by which drugs are tested in human
subjects. Before a new drug can enter the market, its manufacturer must
sponsor clinical trials to show the Food and Drug Administration that
the drug is safe and effective, usually as compared with a placebo or
dummy pill. The results of all the trials (there may be many) are
submitted to the FDA, and if one or two trials are positive-that is,
they show effectiveness without serious risk-the drug is usually
approved, even if all the other trials are negative."
Here is another Angell statement:
"In view of this control and the conflicts of interest that permeate the
enterprise, it is not surprising that [drug] industry-sponsored trials
published in medical journals consistently favor sponsors' drugs-largely
because negative results are not published, positive results are
repeated in slightly different forms, and a positive spin is put on even
negative results. A review of seventy-four clinical trials of
antidepressants, for example, found that thirty-seven of thirty-eight
positive studies were published. But of the thirty-six negative studies,
thirty-three were either not published or published in a form that
conveyed a positive outcome."
It turns out that the source of the informational pipeline that
feeds the entire perception of pharmaceutical medicine is a rank fraud.
It would be on the order of an intelligence agency discovering that the
majority of its operatives were actually working for the other side.
And then continuing on with business as usual.
Sometimes the body is dead even though it keeps on walking. It can smile
and nod and perform basic functions-a zombie-but it is doing so only
because certain implacable criminals back it up and give it a
machine-like force.
"We have the clinical trials of studies on drugs and they are published in top-rank journals. We are the epitome of science."
Yes, false science. Riddled from top to bottom with lies.
Perhaps this will help the next time a friend, pretending he actually
knows anything, tells you pharmaceutical medicine is a resounding
success.
If you need more, cite Dr. Barbara Starfield's famous study,
"Is US health really the best in the world?",
Journal of the American Medical Association, July 26, 2000. Starfield
concludes that 225,000 people are killed by the medical system in the US
every year-106,000 by FDA-approved medicines. That latter figure would
work out to over a MILLION deaths per decade.
A final note: The august editors of medical journals
have a game they can play. Suppose a drug company has just finished
writing up the results of a clinical drug trial and has submitted the
piece to a journal for publication. The editor knows the company carried
out a half-dozen other such trials on the same drug...and they didn't
look good. The drug caused wild fluctuations in blood pressure and blood
sugar. There were heart attacks. Strokes. But this ONE study, the one
submitted for publication, looks very positive. The editor knows if he
prints it and forgets about "ethics," the drug company will order
re-prints of the piece from him and distribute them to doctors all over
the world, and to reporters, professors, government officials. The drug
company will order and pay for so many re-prints, the medical journal
can make $700,000 from publishing THAT ONE STUDY. Let's see. In one
hand, the editor sees: I won't publish it=no money. In the other hand,
he sees: I'll publish it=$700,000. What to do?
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