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is not an isolated instance: an amazing array of other _ of scientists who are studying the same issues. What on suppressed technologies and natural treatments—all earth causes such large discrepancies in results? backed by strong science and overwhelming evidence How is one to know where the truth lies? Further, in like ours—are also covered in many other books. The — too many cases, short-term and incomplete studies are wheels turn slowly when one is up against those witha —_ used as the primary or sole basis for clinical treatment financial commitment to a fatally narrow set of tools protocols. This tendency to use shortcuts for getting and concepts. It can be especially egregious when you. new drugs or procedures to market has led to the are the purveyor of a simple, obvious remedy that has adoption of many dubious treatments that have later the potential to upstage and even make obsolete been removed from clinical practice because of adverse billion-dollar enterprises. and sometimes lethal side effects. The problem is also easily traced to conflicts of Just how evidence based is today's medicine? interest, usually involving relationships between Still, there is much hope. Even within the narrow _ researchers in universities and the sponsors funding paradigm that now prevails, many high-tech scientific their studies. The amount of money spent by industry achievements that are able to filter through the inertia in medical research and development was nearly USS$60 and resistance of the modern medical billion in 2000, or 60 per cent of the establishment are simply brilliant. total, far greater than the roughly $25 We have accomplished the almost billion spent that year by the federal unimaginable feat of uncovering the government. Today, about 70 per cent human genome and are now on the . of all funding for clinical drug trials brink of making advances in stem cell This tendency to originates from the pharmaceutical research that promise to revolutionise use shortcuts for industry itself. Remember, these are e practice of medicine. . the folks whose own products are This exciting researc getting new drugs supposedly being objectively and notwithstanding, just how scientific is scientifically tested! the medicine being practised in the or procedures to It is not uncommon for drug average clinical setting today? market has led to companies to "supervise" the studies In 1978, a report by the US . they fund at universities, giving them Congressional Office of Technology the adoption of the right to determine what gets Assessment concluded: "No many dubious published. They reserve the more than fifteen percent of prerogative to write the medical interventions are treatments that summaries of the articles supported by reliable scientific have later been hemselves, rather than the evidence."® Thirteen years later, scientists who did the research. in 1991, Richard Smith, editor of removed from n fact, in some published research articles, the principal investigator had nothing to do with the study except to allow her name to be used—for a fee. In January 2007, Harvard researchers published an article the prestigious British Medical Journal, came to the same conclusion (BMJ; 303). He went on to comment that “only 1% of the articles in medical journals are scientifically sound and partly because many treatments have in the prestigious PLoS Medicine not been assessed at all".’. And online journal, published by the David Grimes, MD, stated in 1993 in the Journal of the Public Library of Science, that considered the influence American Medical Association (JAMA; 269[23]) that "much, if — of those who paid for a particular study on the outcome not most, of contemporary medical practice still lacks a of the study.’ They reviewed 111 studies, some paid for clinical practice... scientific foundation".* Houston, we have a problem! by independent groups, the rest funded by industry. Of course, scientific method requires that we test any They reported these results: and all claims or new discoveries through the use of ¢ Industry-funded studies were four to eight times clinical trials. Conducting research that is randomised, more likely to favour industry interests. double blind, placebo controlled and crossed over is the ¢ Thirty-eight per cent of independently funded very stuff of genuine modern-day science. _ studies ran against the interests of the funder. Unfortunately, scientists and their sponsors have not Consider, in addition, this article published in the always applied this tried-and-true methodology ina way January 20, 2007, issue of the British Medical Journal, titled that was scrupulous, careful or even honest. One "What Have We Learnt from Vioxx?" The lead author, indicator of the problem is that too many conflicting | Harlan M. Krumholz, the Harold H. Hines, Jr, Professor outcomes emanate from different laboratories or teams of Medicine at Yale University, claimed that the is not an isolated instance: an amazing array of other suppressed technologies and natural treatments—all backed by strong science and overwhelming evidence like ours—are also covered in many other books. The wheels turn slowly when one is up against those with a financial commitment to a fatally narrow set of tools and concepts. It can be especially egregious when you are the purveyor of a simple, obvious remedy that has the potential to upstage and even make obsolete billion-dollar enterprises. This tendency to use shortcuts for ‘or procedures to market has led to the adoption of many dubious treatments that NEXUS ¢ 29 getting new drugs have later been removed from clinical practice... DECEMBER 2009 - JANUARY 2010 www.nexusmagazine.com