HEALTH NEWS: MORE ON 'BIG PHARMA' SCAMS

Big Pharma researcher admits to faking dozens of research studies for Pfizer, Merck
Thursday, February 18, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

"It's being called the largest research fraud in medical history. Dr. Scott Reuben, a former member of Pfizer's speakers' bureau, has agreed to plead guilty to faking dozens of research studies that were published in medical journals.

Now being reported across the mainstream media is the fact that Dr. Reuben accepted a $75,000 grant from Pfizer to study Celebrex in 2005. His research, which was published in a medical journal, has since been quoted by hundreds of other doctors and researchers as "proof" that Celebrex helped reduce pain during post-surgical recovery. There's only one problem with all this: No patients were ever enrolled in the study!

Dr. Scott Reuben, it turns out, faked the entire study and got it published anyway.

It wasn't the first study faked by Dr. Reuben: He also faked study data on Bextra and Vioxx drugs, reports the Wall Street Journal.

As a result of Dr. Reuben's faked studies, the peer-reviewed medical journal Anesthesia & Analgesia was forced to retract 10 "scientific" papers authored by Reuben. The Day of London reports that 21 articles written by Dr. Reuben that appear in medical journals have apparently been fabricated, too, and must be retracted.

After being caught fabricating research for Big Pharma, Dr. Reuben has reportedly signed a plea agreement that will require him to return $420,000 that he received from drug companies. He also faces up to a 10-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.

He was also fired from his job at the Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass. after an internal audit there found that Dr. Reuben had been faking research data for 13 years. (http://www.theday.com/article/20100...)

Business as usual in Big Pharma

What's notable about this story is not the fact that a medical researcher faked clinical trials for the pharmaceutical industry. It's not the fact that so-called "scientific" medical journals published his fabricated studies. It's not even the fact that the drug companies paid this quack close to half a million dollars while he kept on pumping out fabricated research.

The real story here is that this is business as usual in the pharmaceutical industry.

Dr. Reuben's actions really aren't that extraordinary. Drug companies bribe researchers and doctors as a routine matter. Medical journals routinely publish false, fraudulent studies. FDA panel members regularly rely on falsified research in making their drug approval decisions, and the mainstream media regularly quotes falsified research in reporting the news.

Fraudulent research, in other words, is widespread in modern medicine. The pharmaceutical industry couldn't operate without it, actually. It is falsified research that gives the industry its best marketing claims and strongest FDA approvals. Quacks like Dr Scott Reuben are an important part of the pharmaceutical profit machine because without falsified research, bribery and corruption, the industry would have very little research at all.

Pay special attention to the fact that the Anesthesia & Analgesia medical journal gladly published Dr. Reuben's faked studies even though this journal claims to be a "scientific" medical journal based on peer review. Funny, isn't it, how such a scientific medical journal gladly publishes fraudulent research with data that was simply invented by the study author. Perhaps these medical journals should be moved out of the non-fiction section of university libraries and placed under science fiction.

Remember, too, that all the proponents of pharmaceuticals, vaccines and mammograms ignorantly claim that their conventional medicine is all based on "good science." It's all scientific and trustworthy, they claim, while accusing alternative medicine of being "woo woo" wishful thinking and non-scientific hype. Perhaps they should have a quick look in the mirror and realize it is their own system of quack medicine that's based largely on fraudulent research, bribery and corruption.

You just have to laugh, actually, when you hear pushers of vaccines and pharmaceuticals claim their medicine is "scientific" while natural medicine is "unproven." Sure it's scientific -- about as scientific as the storyline in a Scooby Doo cartoon, or as credible as the medical license of a six-year-old kid who just received a "let's play doctor" gift set for Christmas. Many pharmaceutical researchers would have better careers as writers of fiction novels rather than scientific papers.

For all those people who ignorantly claim that modern pharmaceutical science is based on "scientific evidence," just give them these three words: Doctor Scott Reuben.

Drug companies support fraudulent research

Don't forget that the drug companies openly supported Dr. Scott Reuben's research. They paid him, in fact, to keep on fabricating studies.
The drug companies claim to be innocent in all this, but behind the scenes they had to have known what was going on. Dr. Reuben's research was just too consistently favorable to drug company interests to be scientifically legitimate. If a drug company wanted to "prove" that their drug was good for some new application, all they had to do was ask Dr. Reuben to come up with the research (wink wink). "Here's another fifty thousand dollars to study whether our drug is good for post-surgical pain (wink)."

And before long, Dr. Reuben would magically materialize a brand new study that just happened to "prove" exactly what the sponsoring drug company wanted to prove. Advocates of western medicine claim they don't believe in magic, but when it comes to clinical trials, they actually do: All the results they wish to see just magically appear as long as the right researcher gets paid to materialize the results out of thin air, much like waving a magician's wand and chanting, "Abra cadabra... let there be RESEARCH DATA!"

Shazam! The research data materializes just like that. It all gets written up into a "scientific" paper that also magically gets published in medical journals that fail to ask a single question that might exposed the research fraud.

I guess these people believe in magic after all, huh? Where science is lacking, a little "research magic" conveniently fills the void.

The whole system makes a mockery of real science. It is a system operated by criminals who fabricate whatever "scientific evidence" they need in order to get published in medical journals and win FDA approval for drugs that they fully realize are killing people.

What is "Evidence-Based Medicine?"

The fact that a researcher like Dr. Reuben could so successfully fabricate fraudulent study data, then get it published in peer-reviewed science journals, and get away with it for 13 years sheds all kinds of new light on what's really behind "evidence-based medicine."

The recipe for evidence-based medicine is quite simple: Fabricate the evidence! Get it published in any mainstream medical journal. Then you can quote the fabricated evidence as "fact!"

When pushers of pharmaceuticals and vaccines resort to quoting "evidence-based medicine" as their defense, keep in mind that much of their so-called evidence has been entirely fabricated. When they claim their branch of toxic chemical medicine is based on "real science," what they really mean is that it's based on fraudulent science but they've all secretly agreed to call it "real science." When they claim to have "scientific facts" supporting their position, what they really mean is that those "facts" were fabricated by criminal researchers being paid bribes by the drug companies.

"Evidence-based medicine," it turns out, hardly exists anymore. And even if it does, how do you know which studies are real vs. which ones were fabricated? If a trusted, well-paid researcher can get his falsified papers published for 13 years in top-notch science journals -- without getting caught by his peers -- then what does that say about the credibility of the entire peer-review science paper publishing process?

Here's what it says: "Scientific medicine" is a total fraud.

And this fraud isn't limited to Dr Scott Reuben, either. Remember: he engaged in routine research fraud for 13 years before being caught. There are probably thousands of other scientists engaged in similar research fraud right now who haven't yet been caught in the act. Their fraudulent research papers have no doubt already been published in "scientific" medical journals. They've been quoted in the popular press. They've been relied on by FDA decision makers to approve drugs as "safe and effective" for widespread use.

And yet underneath all this, there's nothing more than fraud and quackery. Sure, there may be some legitimate studies mixed in with all the fraud, but how can we tell the difference?

How are we to trust this system that claims to have a monopoly on scientific truth but in reality is a front for outright scientific fraud?

Keep up the great work, Dr Reuben

Thank you, Dr Scott Reuben, for showing us the truth about the pharmaceutical industry, the research quackery, the laughable "scientific" journals and the bribery and corruption that characterizes the pharmaceutical industry today. You have done more to shed light on the true nature of the drug industry than a thousand articles on NaturalNews.com ever could.

Keep up the good work. After paying your fine and serving a little jail time, I'm sure your services will be in high demand at all the top drug companies that need yet more "scientific" studies to be fabricated and submitted to the medical journals.

You may be a dishonest, disgusting human being to most of the world, but you're a huge asset to the pharmaceutical industry and they need you back! There are more studies that need to be fabricated soon; more false papers that need to be published and more dangerous drugs that need to receive FDA approval. Hurry!

Because if there's one place that extreme dishonesty is richly rewarded, it's in the pharmaceutical industry, where poisons are approved as medicines and fiction is published as the truth."

Sources for this story include:
http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/...

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2010/01...

http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicH...

http://www.theday.com/article/20100...

MUST READ: THE FLU/VACCINE SCAM

Pulling back the curtain
on swine flu.. From the "DAILY DOSE"

"Looks like the swine flu "crisis" has finally unraveled -- just as I've warned right from the start. A leading European health official is now pushing for an investigation into the so-called pandemic -- and the desperate push to line Big Pharma pockets at your expense.

Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, health chief at the Council of Europe, put it best when he told the European press, "We have had a mild flu -- and a false pandemic." His resolution calling for the investigation passed the Council, setting the stage for an emergency debate. It seems they've finally realized that the real emergency isn't the flu -- it's the lies we've been told about it, and the dangerous vaccines forced on millions based on those filthy falsehoods.

The good doctor -- turns out there are still a few of us left -- is even calling the non-pandemic "one of the greatest medical scandals of the century." We're only a decade into this century -- we've still got 90 years to see what else Big Pharma has up its sleeve! But already, this one's been a doozy. It'll be hard to top Vioxx in terms of death and destruction... but as far as swindles go, swine flu takes the prize. Around the world, supposedly concerned and impartial health "experts" all predicted terrifying (and ultimately nonexistent) consequences from the swine flu... and many of them just so happened to have financial ties to Big Pharma.

Maybe that's why the World Health Organization was so quick to change its definition of "pandemic" to make swine flu fit the bill. These same experts are now warning of a swine flu "third wave" and urging more people to submit to the needle. Listen closely and you might hear them laughing as they count their money. Give it a rest already, guys. This con job's over."

William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.

More:
http://www.naturalnews.com:80/027984_swine_flu_vaccines.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1K74Tnrrok

http://www.wanttoknow.info/healthmediaarticles

http://www.wanttoknow.info/a-swine-flu-fear-mongering

MORE 'BIG PHARMA' SCAMS & FRAUD

Tamiflu anti-viral drug revealed as complete hoax; Roche studies based on scientific fraud....
Monday, December 14, 2009
by Mike Adams, Editor of NaturalNews.com

"When it comes to selling chemicals that claim to treat H1N1 swine flu, the pharmaceutical industry's options are limited to two: Vaccines and anti-virals. The most popular anti-viral, by far, is Tamiflu, a drug that's actually derived from a Traditional Chinese Medicine herb called star anise. But Tamiflu is no herb. It's a potentially fatal concentration of isolated chemical components that have essentially been bio-pirated from Chinese medicine. And when you isolate and concentrate specific chemicals in these herbs, you lose the value (and safety) of full-spectrum herbal medicine. That didn't stop Tamiflu's maker, Roche, from trying to find a multi-billion-dollar market for its drug. In order to tap into that market, however, Roche needed to drum up some evidence that Tamiflu was both safe and effective.

Roche engages in science fraud. Roche claims there are ten studies providing Tamiflu is both safe and effective. According to the company, Tamiflu has all sorts of benefits, including a 61% reduction in hospital admissions by people who catch the flu and then get put on Tamiflu. The problem with these claims is that they aren't true. They were simply invented by Roche. A groundbreaking article recently published in the British Medical Journal accuses Roche of misleading governments and physicians over the benefits of Tamiflu. Out of the ten studies cited by Roche, it turns out, only two were ever published in science journals. And where is the original data from those two studies? Lost! The data has disappeared. Files were discarded. The researcher of one study says he never even saw the data. Roche took care of all that, he explains.

So the Cochrane Collaboration, tasked with reviewing the data behind Tamiflu, decided to investigate. After repeated requests to Roche for the original study data, they remained stonewalled. The only complete data set they received was from an unpublished study of 1,447 adults which showed that Tamiflu was no better than placebo. Data from the studies that claimed Tamiflu was effective was apparently lost forever. As The Atlantic reports, that's when former employees of Adis International (essentially a Big Pharma P.R. company) shocked the medical world by announcing they had been hired to ghost-write the studies for Roche. It gets even better: These researchers were told what to write by Roche! As one of these ghostwriters told the British Medical Journal:"The Tamiflu accounts had a list of key messages that you had to get in. It was run by the [Roche] marketing department and you were answerable to them. In the introduction ...I had to say what a big problem influenza is. I'd also have to come to the conclusion that Tamiflu was the answer." In other words, the Roche marketing department ran the science and told researchers what conclusions to draw from the clinical trials. Researchers hired to conduct the science were controlled by the marketing puppeteers. No matter what they found in the science, they had already been directed to reach to conclusion that "Tamiflu was the answer." Now, I don't know about you, but where I come from, we call this "science fraud." And as numerous NaturalNews investigations have revealed, this appears to be the status quo in the pharmaceutical industry. Virtually none of the "science" conducted by drug companies can be trusted at all because it really isn't science in the first place. It's just propaganda being dressed up to look like science. Sadly, even the CDC has been fooled by this clinical trial con. As stated by author Shannon Brownlee in The Atlantic:"...the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appears to be operating in some alternative universe, where valid science no longer matters to public policy. The agency's flu recommendations are in lockstep with Roche's claims that the drug can be life-saving -- despite the FDA's findings and despite the lack of studies to prove such a claim. What's more, neither the CDC nor the FDA has demanded the types of scientific studies that could definitively determine whether or not the company's claims are true: that Tamiflu reduces the risk of serious complications and saves lives. Nancy Cox, who heads the CDC's flu program, told us earlier this year she opposes a placebo-controlled study (in which one half of patients would be given Tamiflu and the other half would be given placebo), because the drug's benefits are already proven." Did you catch that last line? The CDC isn't interested in testing Tamiflu because "the drug's benefits are already proven." Except they aren't. But this is how the pharmaceutical industry operates: Step 1) Fabricate evidence that your drug works. Step 2) Use that fraudulent evidence to get your drug approved. Step 3) Use fear to create consumer demand for your drug (and encourage governments to stockpile it). Step 4) Avoid any actual scientific testing by claiming the drug has already been proven to work (and cite your original fraudulent studies to back you up). This is the recipe the CDC is following right now with Tamiflu. It's a recipe of scientific stupidity and circular logic, of course, but that seems to be strangely common in the medical community these days.

Even the FDA says Tamiflu doesn't work. The FDA, remarkably, hasn't entirely given in to the Tamiflu hoax. They required Roche to print the following disclaimer on Tamiflu lables -- a disclaimer that openly admits the drug has never been proven to work:"Tamiflu has not been proven to have a positive impact on the potential consequences (such as hospitalizations, mortality, or economic impact) of seasonal, avian, or pandemic influenza." Even further, an FDA spokesperson told the British Medical Journal, "The clinical trials... failed to demonstrate any significant difference in rates of hospitalization, complications, or mortality in patients receiving either Tamiflu or placebo." It's the same message over and over again, like a broken record: Tamiflu doesn't work. And the "science" that says Tamiflu does work was all apparently fabricated from the start.

The Tamiflu stockpiling scandal: Junk science, though, is good enough for the U.S. government. Based on little more than fabricated evidence and Big Pharma propaganda, the U.S. government has spent $1.5 billion stockpiling Tamiflu. This turned out to be a great deal for Roche, but a poor investment for U.S. citizens who ended up spending huge dollars for a medicine that doesn't work. As is stated in the Atlantic:"Governments, public health agencies, and international bodies such as the World Health Organization, have all based their decisions to recommend and stockpile Tamiflu on studies that had seemed independent, but had in fact been funded by the company and were authored almost entirely by Roche employees or paid academic consultants.

The upshot of all this is that governments around the world are flushing billions of dollars down the drain stockpiling a drug that doesn't work -- a drug promoted via propaganda and scientific fraud. This isn't the first time your government has wasted taxpayer dollars, of course (it seems to be what the U.S. government does best), but this example is especially concerning given that this was all done with the excuse that natural remedies are useless and only vaccines and Tamiflu can protect you from a viral pandemic. But as it turns out, vaccines and Tamiflu are useless and only natural remedies really work. That's why so many informed people around the world have been stocking up on vitamin D, garlic, anti-viral tinctures and superfoods to protect themselves from a potential pandemic that most world governments remain clueless to prevent. I find it fascinating that the governments of the world are stockpiling medicines that DON'T work, while the natural health people of the world are stockpiling natural remedies that DO work. If a real pandemic ever strikes our world, there's no question who the survivors will be (hint: it won't be the clueless chaps standing in line waiting for their Tamiflu pills...). Which remedies really do work to boost immune function and protect the body from infectious disease? I've actually published a special report revealing my top five recommended remedies: http://www.naturalnews.com/Report_A... In addition to the remedies mentioned in that report, I also recommend high-dose vitamin D as well as the Viral Defense product from www.PlantCures.com . I have no financial ties to any of the companies whose products are recommended here, by the way. Unlike the pharmaceutical industry, I don't operate purely for profit. My job is to get valuable information out to the People -- information that can help save lives and reduce suffering. This is the job the FDA and CDC should be doing but have long since abandoned in their betrayal of the American people."

Sources for this story include:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/2009...
(A must read)

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