Medical Research Fraud? Cancer Research Fraud?

Want to know more about Medical Research Fraud? Cancer Research Fraud? I suggest you check out this article by Dr Mercola.

Pfizer Research Scandal: FDA debars fraudster doctor, Scott Reuben

He was accused of faking research for a dozen years in published studies suggesting after-surgery benefits from Vioxx and Celebrex. Last year, he was sentenced to six months in jail plus three years supervised release after pleading guilty to fraud. The former chief of acute pain at Baystate Medical Center received grants from various drugmakers but never performed the studies, fabricated patient data and submitted info to journals that was unwittingly published. Now, the FDA has permanently debarring [sic] him from providing services in any capacity to a person that has an approved or pending drug product application, according to the debarment order, which was published today in The Federal Register.
Read article at pharmalot.com

Personally, I favour avoiding painkillers. - I've had two major operations and I refused painkillers for both of them. Yes, it hurts a lot when you come round from the anaesthetic, but you know the pain will gradually get less severe and you can steel yourself to cope with it. But with painkillers - especially the 'strong' ones - there are always adverse side-effects. And, as in this case, you cannot be sure that you have been given the facts about drugs. Drug companies indulge in criminality, including bribing key opinion leaders such as Scott Reuben was, to recommend their drugs, falsifying drug trial data, corrupting medical journals, etc. Painkiller drugs in particular seem to be problematic. The most recently publicised settlement for criminality of a drug company of which I am aware is the Merck/Vioxx scandal reported on the BBC News website last Tuesday. (Vioxx was a prescription painkiller.) Sadly, although Merck have had to pay almost $1bn (£640m) in settlement, this will not deter them from their criminal practices. That huge sum is insignificant in comparison to the colossal profits they garner from the sales of their dangerous products. Criminals, in my opinion - criminals whose crimes destroy the lives and health and happiness of millions of innocent people the world over - should be punished with the utmost rigour of the law, and that should, of course, mean imprisonment for the people at the top of the company, the people who instigate, fund and perpetuate the criminality.

Counterfeit medicine fraud: man jailed

I must confess this BBC News report caused me a double-take. "A man has been jailed for eight years for his part in what has been described as the most serious fake medicine fraud in the European Union. Peter Gillespie, 64, from Hertfordshire, was part of a £4.7m plot to bring two million doses of counterfeit drugs from China to the UK. He was convicted of conspiring to defraud pharmaceutical wholesalers, pharmacists and members of the public." The fake drugs "contained only a fraction of the correct dosage. They included Zyprexa, a medicine to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder."

The prosecution claimed that patients had been put at risk by this fraud. - I seriously wonder about this. - Zyprexa is such a dangerous drug. See Drug information about Zyprexa. And, perhaps more pertinently, read this damning Bloomberg report about the criminally fraudulent claims made about Zyprexa by the drug's manufacturers and the great harm (including death) the drug caused to unfortunate patients who took it. Maybe patients would have been a great deal less at risk from counterfeit Zyprexa than from the real thing...

I believe that the only health in which drug companies are interested is the health of their own financial profits.

Pharmaceutical Industry's Criminal Fraud Settlements

Between 1991-2010, there were 165 criminal and/or civil settlements by major pharmaceutical companies comprising of $19.8 billion in penalties. Four of the world's largest drug companies--GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Schering-Plough--accounted for 53% ($10.5 billion) of penalties during these two decades.
Read article on the website of the Alliance for Human Research Protection (USA)

Secret report reveals how MEPs make millions by systematic abuses of parliamentary allowances

A leaked internal report has revealed systematic abuses by Euro MPs of parliamentary allowances that enable them to pocket more than £1m in profits from a single five-year term, writes Jonathan Oliver. The auditor’s confidential report, suppressed by the Brussels parliament, discloses the extraordinary frauds used by MEPs to siphon off staff allowances funded by taxpayers. It shows that some claimed for paying assistants of whom no record exists, awarded them bonuses of up to 1½ times annual salary and diverted public money into front companies. An investigation into the abuses of staff allowances worth up to £182,000 a year — many of which are paid by MEPs to members of their family — was delivered in January last year but was not published.
Read article in The Sunday Times (UK)