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The Truth About Medical Journals
(Son of Truth of Self)
The illusion called medical journalism: the deep secret and medical CIA - by Jon Rappoport plus commentary by Chef-Doctor Jemichel on medical psychopathy.
Date: 11/25/2016 12:50:56 AM ( 8 y ago)
October 11, 2020 - "Most Published Research Findings Are False" -
"It can be proven that most claimed research findings are false," says Dr. John Ioannidis of the Tufts-New England Medical Center, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston. In a paper published in the journal PLoS Medicine, Dr Ioannidis explains that there is an increasing concern in the scientific community that most current published research findings are false. Study outcomes are influenced by a number of factors, including researchers' bias, financial interests, sponsors' interests, limited sample sizes, poor study design, statistical manipulations, and just plain old greed.
"Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true," says Ioannidia. "For many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias."1 For most of the past several decades medical investigators have skewed research toward condemning saturated fat and cholesterol because that was the prevailing bias. Although now enough accurate research has been done to show that eating saturated fat and cholesterol do not promote heart disease, stroke, or diabetes, bias keeps the lipid hypothesis alive.
The lipid hypothesis was born primarily though the work of Dr. Ancel Keys, who published a study showing that as fat consumption increases, so do heart disease deaths. He created a graph showing the data from six countries. This graph clearly showed that those countries that ate little fat had low heart disease death rates and those that ate the most fat had the highest death rates. The graph he created showed a straight line relationship between fat consumption and heart disease deaths. In 1970 he refined his hypothesis using seven countries to show a similar relationship between saturated fat and heart disease. His belief was that dietary saturated fat was the cause of heart disease. His graphs convinced many in the medical community, and the lipid hypothesis became the prevailing belief for the next several decades. Much research was published in an effort to further prove this hypothesis.
The problem with Dr. Keys' original work was that it was all fabricated. He had data from some 20 countries he could have used, yet he carefully selected only those countries that neatly fit his hypothesis. The rest of the data was ignored as if it didn't exist. If Keys had used all the data available to him when he created his graph, the relationship between dietary fat and heart disease would have vanished.
Decades of medical and nutritional research have been tainted due to bias based on faulty science. While more accurate studies are being published in regards to the effect of dietary fat on heart disease and other conditions, a strong financial interest exists that struggles to keep alive false theories. Pharmaceutical companies make billions of dollars selling cholesterol-lowering drugs. The latest studies are showing that total blood cholesterol is inconsequential and does not affect heart disease; cholesterol levels are more of a consequence of heredity rather than diet. To counter these facts, the pharmaceutical industry has sponsored a multitude of studies to justify the use of cholesterol-lowering drugs. As a consequence, the medical literature is filled with conflicting studies in regard to diet, nutrition, and cholesterol.
The pharmaceutical industry sponsors a vast amount of research. Researchers know that if they publish information uncomplimentary to their sponsor, their funding will be cut off and their careers could be in jeopardy. Therefore, there is tremendous pressure placed on the researchers to produce favorable results. Even if researchers are funded by private or government agencies, if they publish studies critical of drug companies' interests they are often targeted for attack.
Drug companies keep hit lists of those who criticize them. A recent news story tells about such lists found on company emails that were leaked to the public. The pharmaceutical giant Merck identified certain doctors who had criticized the painkiller Vioxx, a dangerous and now-withdrawn drug that the company produced. Company emails described ways to "neutralize" or "discredit" these doctors.
One of the methods they use to discredit the research of the doctors on their hit lists is to fund research to counteract their claims. A good example of this is the case of Dr. Andrew Wakefield.2 Dr. Wakefield, a Senior Lecturer at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine in the UK, was one of the original researchers who discovered the link between autism and childhood vaccinations. The study that landed him in hot water was published in the prestigious medical journal the Lancet, in February 1998. In this article he only suggested the possible connection between autism and vaccinations. But the article caused vaccination sales in the UK to decline dramatically. In retaliation, the pharmaceutical industry hired researchers to publish studies discrediting Wakefield's work and to demonstrate that there is no link between autism and vaccinations. Several studies were published, and the media (no doubt prodded by the drug industry) loudly proclaimed all is well, there is no fear, vaccinations do not cause autism. However, it was later discovered, without any media fanfare, that the lead author of some of these studies had fabricated the data. He may not have even written the studies he is credited (or discredited) for writing. It is likely that the drug company paid a ghostwriter to write the articles and all he did was sign his name to them. Medical ghostwriting is big business and a highly profitable one for the drug companies. It is also a very unethical practice as well because it advertises alleged benefits of drugs while hiding adverse side effects.
The media are continually reporting adverse reactions to newly approved drugs, many of which are pulled from store shelves as complaints pile up and lawsuits ensue. Remember the Phen-fen fiasco or the Baycol blunder? These FDA-approved drugs caused many deaths and crippled others before being pulled from the market. Phen-fen, which was prescribed as an aid in weight loss, caused permanent heart and lung damage. Baycol, a cholesterol-lowering statin drug, caused breakdown of muscle tissue resulting in kidney and heart failure. Interestingly, most of these "side effects" were known before they were approved by the FDA, but were considered only "minor" nuisances because the drug companies downplayed or even suppressed this information during the approval process.
Studies submitted to the FDA are typically conducted by or funded by the drug manufacturer, who obviously has a heavy financial interest. These and subsequent studies, however, are not necessarily accurate or factual. Once a drug is approved, additional studies promoting the effectiveness of the drug are required to entice doctors to prescribe it and reporters to write glowing articles about it to convince the public and create demand for the product.
Unfortunately, many of these drugs don't perform as well as they are touted or carry health risks that far outweigh any potential benefit. To sidestep this problem the drug companies engage in the practice of medical ghostwriting. Medical ghostwriting is the production of phony medical articles based on biased research to promote the use of drugs and vaccines.
Peer-reviewed articles published in medical journals are the gold standard when it comes to scientific reports. Your doctor relies on them when making decisions affecting your health. Medical ghostwriting is scary because your doctor may be basing his advice to you on marketing propaganda rather than sound science. This ultimately may be disastrous to your health, just as Phen-fen, Baycol, and Vioxx were for thousands of others.
Drug companies hire people with scientific backgrounds, often with PhDs, to stay in the shadows and crank out glowing reports for their products. The drug companies then pay doctors to put their names on the studies as the authors. Many doctors are more than willing to do this for the money and prestige, as well as to advance their careers.
Medical ghostwriters are given an outline from the drug companies telling them what to write and what data to use. Negative data is not provided. The purpose of the article is to make the study sound as positive as possible to encourage favorable media publicity and encourage doctors to prescribe the drug. Adverse side effects are often completely ignored.
Medical ghostwriters typically make over $100,000 a year. Drug companies may pay as much as $20,000 for a single article that makes its way into a prestigious medical journal like the Lancet, British Medical Journal, or the New England Journal of Medicine.
The drug companies pay doctors and university professors who have no connection with the study to sign their names as the authors of the article. Some of these "authors" may not have even read the studies they supposedly have written. Drug companies prefer high-profile authors: the higher the profile, the greater the credibility for the article. This explains why some doctors can be listed as authors or coauthors to a dozen or more studies a year. In reality, he or she may not have done any actual work on the articles or the studies.
"What appear to be scientific articles are really infomercials," says Dr. David Healy of Cardiff University School of Medicine, Wales. Unfortunately, universities get entangled with the drug companies as well. Drug companies fund research. Universities thrive on the prestige and money generated from this research. Consequently, researchers are pressured to produce favorable results and minimize unfavorable results. The consequences of publishing the facts, regardless of the sponsor, can have drastic repercussions. Dr. Healy lost his position at the University of Toronto after he criticized the drug company Eli Lilly for suppressing evidence that its drug Prozac leads to increased deaths from suicide.
Dr. Healy is a high-profile researcher with 110 peer-reviewed papers and 13 books to his credit. For this reason, he is a prime candidate as an author for ghostwritten studies. He was approached by one company to write an article based on his previous studies, which he was willing to do. "To my big surprise," says Healy, "I had an e-mail shortly afterwards." It stated: "In order to reduce your workload, we have had our ghostwriters produce a first draft based on your published work. I attach it here."
Healy wasn't comfortable with the glowing review of the drug, so he crafted his own article. The drug company wrote back and said he'd missed something key. In the end, the drug company put someone else's name on the article.
Healy is spooked by the deception. He says it goes beyond being misleading — it can be dangerous. He's seen a lot of articles on drugs, like anti-depressants, that don't mention serious problems. "People and children, for instance, that have been put on these drugs, actually committing suicide or becoming suicidal. But the finished articles actually don't reflect this at all."
Essentially all drug companies hire medical ghostwriters to produce favorable journal articles on their products. Healy has seen internal drug company documents in which lists of scientific papers were written up, ready to go. The only things missing were the names of high-profile doctors to be listed as the authors. This is routine practice in the pharmaceutical industry. Healy estimates that 50 percent of the drug studies published in medical journals are ghostwritten. You can't tell which ones are legitimate and which are not. Although authors must declare if they have any competing interests that would influence their results, doctors who sign their names to ghostwritten articles do not reveal their relationship with the drug company, so they appear as impartial researchers.
Getting doctors to fess up to sticking their names on papers written by ghostwriters is tricky business. When one high-profile author was approached about the authorship of an article, at first he admitted he "couldn't remember who wrote the paper" that had his name on it. As the interview progressed he became increasingly uncomfortable with the line of questioning and said the drug company "might have" written the first draft. By the end of the interview he suddenly remembered that he'd written every word of it.
Medical journal editors say they're trying to address the problem by weeding out planted studies, but it is not an easy task because each author must be contacted and questioned. When a study is submitted to medical journals, everyone who has had anything to do with the article is listed — like a film credit. As many as a dozen coauthors could be listed. John Hoey, the editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, says, "We have no way of checking. We barely have the resources to do what we're doing, let alone whether so-and-so is telling us honestly what they did."
When you go to the doctor and he prescribes a medication, are you getting one that is the best for your condition with the least risk, or are you getting something that has the most favorable write-up in the latest medical journal? The statin drug Baycol that caused many to have kidney and heart failure was favorably viewed as a safe treatment of high cholesterol, which, by the way, is a benign condition for most people.
When a medical ghostwriter (who was interviewed on condition of anonymity) was asked if he had any concerns about what he was doing, he stated he didn't feel any ownership for the articles. He was just doing a job. It was the drug company's responsibility. "As long as I do my job well, it's not up to me to decide how the drug is positioned" he says. "I'm just following the information I'm being given. The way I look at it, if doctors that have their name on it, that's their responsibility, not mine."3
Keep in mind that just because a study says a certain drug is effective or safe, it isn't necessarily so. As it looks now, the situation isn't going to change anytime soon. The practice of medical ghostwriting isn't about to give up the ghost. Drug companies will continue to influence researchers and research institutions. Personal preferences and biases are still going to creep into studies.
Does that mean we cannot trust any of the research being published in medical journals? No, it means that you need to be very cautious about which journal articles you believe and which ones to take with a grain of salt.
References -
John Ioannidis, Why Most Published Research Findings Are False. PLoS Medicine.
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124.
Joseph Mercola, Why Medical Authorities Went to Such Extremes to Silence Dr. Andrew Wakefield. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/04/10/wakefield-interview.aspx.
Erica Johnson, Medical Ghostwriting, CBC News (plus an additional link at the article)[12]
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November 25, 2016 -
A professor friend whose work includes medical anthropology has consistently asserted that articles published in a medical journal are the leading authoritative reference on new treatment or product assessment. That may have been largely true back when the professor was a student however the times have changed now and according to Jon Rapoport[1] the changes have unfortunately impacted the reliability of possibly half the articles now published in medical journals.
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March 22, 2018 -
"The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue."[9]
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January 18, 2017 -
My "Freedom Calendar" of 2010 indicated January 20th as the day that: "AMA Journal BRAGGED About HAVING CONTROL OVER MEDICAL ARTICLES in UNITED PRESS - 1940" (All caps used in the calendar.) I researched this and found the following:
"The Journal of the American Medical Association on January 20, 1940, bragged that the United Press had been induced to issue a directive requiring all articles on cures and human health to 'clear' through its New York Bureau and so-called science editor."[2]
And another quote like the above:
"...The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the organ of the Medical Syndicate in the U.S., had bragged as far back as January 20, 1940, that the United Press had been induced to issue a directive requiring all articles on cures and human health to ‘be cleared’ through its New York bureau and ‘science editors.’---Hans Ruesch, 1982 (Naked Empress p102)"[3]
Apparently the January 20, 1940 issue is archived online[4] in the form of a number of PDFs however it is a mystery to me as to which title might contain the "bragging".
Just requested librarian research assistance as follows:
Greetings!
I'm seeking a specific quote that is reportedly in the January 20, 1940 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
I wish to cite the exact quote regarding the United Press issuing a directive requiring all articles on cures and human health to ‘be cleared’ through its New York bureau and ‘science editors.’
So far I found http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/issue/114/3
offering a number of PDFs however I don't see article titles that indicate my subject matter. I wonder if this journal issue had an editor's comment (or other non-article entry) containing the statement I'm seeking.
Would it be possible for your to research this?
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January 19th, 2017 -
Success! The good research librarian people at UCSD came through with exactly what I had hoped for! The following is a direct quote from the above mentioned journal:
ACCURACY IN MEDICAL NEWS
Only those closely associated with modern trends in publication are familiar with the vast improvement that has been taking place relative to the publication of news of scientific advances. A bulletin recently issued by the United Press to its bureau managers and division managers is worthy of quotation. It reads:
It seems advisable to restate our traditional policy concerning handling stories of "cures" or other medical developments. This policy, which dates back more than twenty years, is never to call anything a cure, or in fact give any publicity to any remedy of any description, without a thorough investigation.
This rule is now being strengthened by the following:
Under no circumstances put any story on the leased wire about a remedy. If the bureau manager is convinced that the story has merit, he should overhead it to New York for investigation and consideration there.[5]
For the "Journal" to write "cures" is to add a negative "spin" to the more neutral term: remedy. For millennia we have had golf medicine offering folk remedies. That is a common law right of the people. But when it comes to publishing these remedies in the modern day press (of the last century) which is not a "free press" (by any definition of the term) "common law rights of the people" are disregarded with impunity! That is what it is however to discount the validity of the people's remedies may be a potential cause for "indigestion" (at the very minimal end of the spectrum) or sudden death syndrome (at the maximum end).
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June 4, 2017 - "...pharmaceutically based medicine, so much of which is tainted with improper and fraudulent research"
Treatment Essentials Second Edition[6]
"This is the second edition of Treatment Essentials, I have added another fifteen chapters so now the book is over five hundred pages. This book will give you a practical understanding of Natural Allopathic Medicine, and how to use it for a number of common conditions. The reader is introduced to a protocol that is universal, meaning it can be applied in all health and medical situations.
In my Transdermal Magnesium Therapy book I start out with the words, 'The book that you hold in your hands could save your life. It certainly contains information that can extend your physical existence and save you and your loved ones from a considerable amount of pain.' The same is true for this book.
Treatment Essentials is for doctors and patients, especially patients who do not want to see a doctor and want to treat themselves or patients who have seen a doctor but do not care to follow their treatment plans.
One of the key ways the protocol in this book is different from other approaches in the world of medicine and natural healthcare is our use of emergency and intensive-care-ward medicines (non-pharmaceutical types) that hold the potential to save lives in a heartbeat. One can apply these lifesaving medicinals around the clock at home orally, transdermally (topically), and via nebulization, enemas, feeding tubes, baths and even intravenous methods if a nurse is available.
These substances address and resolve the most basic issues in our physiology for they are not pharmaceutical substances but rather concentrated nutritional medicinals like magnesium salts, sodium bicarbonate, and iodine. These substances all heal through fulfillment of nutritional law, which is much more intelligent and rational than pharmaceutically based medicine, so much of which is tainted with improper and fraudulent research."[7]
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December 22, 2017 - Additional medical world revelations can be seen through the activities of "the medical CIA".[8]
Having read this article I now call this "revelation" medical psychopathy!
Some questions to possibly contemplate -
What is the remedy for medical psychopathy?
If the medical paradigm is sick then where can it go for its cure?
What can society do about medical psychopathy when the medical world does not believe in cures?
What I see is all of this comes back to the need for dialogue because the absence of dialogue is how the door to psychopathy is left open. And "the door to psychopathy" in the medical world has been left open for at least one hundred years now. I could start a new writing project to compile what I have gathered so far in this regards (maybe after we have passed through the remaining shadow of this current Mercury retrograde).
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October 28, 2018 - "The Ethical and Moral Corruption" in "Financially Incentivizing Patients and Physicians" -
"... Big Pharma is 'Paying Physicians, Patients to Lower LDL-C' because it’s cost effective! I guess with all the negative associations people have with cholesterol statin drugs these days, with all the terrible side effects, with the fact that cholesterol is NOT the cause of heart disease, patients have to be paid to take their medicine and doctors have to be paid to prescribe it!
Stop for one second and remind yourself that if the drugs were working and didn’t cause harm, people would take them! But they aren’t working. Case Closed.
They can’t say that taking cholesterol drugs adds years to a patient’s life, because it doesn’t. All cholesterol drugs do is knock down cholesterol while causing serious side effects. So, medicine and Big Pharma has to keep saying cholesterol is the problem so they can prescribe and sell statin drugs. And that’s why they have to bribe people to take them.
And the great news is that bribery is cost effective! Cost effective for whom? Big Pharma, that’s whom!! We have commercialized medicine to the tipping point, folks. I keep thinking it can’t go on like this much longer without a general revolt. But there won’t be one. Big Pharma doesn’t have to worry because the younger generation doesn’t know the difference between assembly-line medicine and medicine that treats the whole person.
In fact, a new survey shows that doctors get higher 'ratings' on Internet websites when they prescribe antibiotics for colds and flus instead of giving advice to rest and drink fluids. In case you missed the news flash – antibiotics are dangerously overused and they aren’t working anymore. Read my last blog 'What are MARCoNS?' for the scary details. (Link at Dr. Carolyn Dean's page.)
The article doesn’t use the word bribery but says 'financially incentivizing patients and physicians to control low-density-lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) is cost-effective.'
Does no one see the ethical and moral corruption engendered with this approach? Obviously not because this analysis was published Sept 14, 2018 in JAMA online so it passed a peer-review board. ..."[10]
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Note - Re: "the younger generation doesn’t know the difference between assembly-line medicine and medicine that treats the whole person". The whole concept of "medicine" (dominated by the pharmaceutical industry as products in commerce) continues to be divorced from the original concept attributed to Hippocrates whom Western Medicine has regarded as the "Father of Medicine"! Great irony!
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March 20, 2019 -
“'The Soft Science of Dietary Fat', an explosive exposé in the March 30 issue of Science. Author Gary Taubes points out that 50 years of mainstream nutritional research and hundreds of millions of research dollars have not proved that eating a lowfat diet will help you live longer. Taubes notes that the principal political supporter of the lowfat agenda was Senator George McGovern, who had spent some time on the severely lowfat Pritikin diet. . . before dropping out of the program. The McGovern Committee’s 'Dietary Goals for the United States,' which almost single-handedly changed nutritional policy in the US, was written by a vegetarian, Nick Mottern, a former labor reporter with no background in nutrition. Thus have government, science and industry put their curse on healthy traditional foods and ushered millions of perfectly healthy Americans into the jaws of the medical care system."[11]
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Notes:
[1] https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2016/11/17/the-illusion-called-medical-journalism-the-deep-secret/
[2] http://www.wellwithin1.com/TheDrugStoryBeale.htm
[3] http://www.whale.to/vaccines/ruesch_q.html
[4] http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/issue/114/3
[5] January 20, 1940 under "Current Comment" -
JAMA. 1940;114(3):252. doi:10.1001/jama.1940.02810030052016:
http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/1159450
[6] http://drsircus.com/general/treatment-essentials-book-launch/
[7] Dr Sircus - in an Email (by subscription) on June 4, 2017.
[8] https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/12/20/the-medical-cia-how-environmental-destruction-magically-becomes-a-medical-disease/
[9] Dr. Richard Horton, Editor-In-Chief Of The Lancet:
https://anticorruptionsociety.com/2018/03/21/medical-journal-editor-admits-science-has-taken-a-turn-towards-darkness/
[10] https://drcarolyndean.com/2018/10/bribes-for-drugs/
[11] https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/caustic-commentary/caustic-commentary-summer-2001/
[12] http://www.coconutresearchcenter.org/hwnl_7-2.htm
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Keywords:
medical journalism, medical CIA, psychopathy, Medical Syndicate, remedy, folk remedies, fraudulent research, The Soft Science of Dietary Fat, low fat diet, Dietary Goals for the United States, nutritional policy, traditional foods
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