In a systematic review and meta-analysis we summarize the available evidence on how frequently general practitioners/family physicians (GPs) use pure placebos (e.g., placebo pills) and non-specific therapies (sometimes referred to as impure ...

Why the fuck did they remove fat people from this study?

Past failures to understand pregnancy and drug use make it critical to not remain silent amid this new finding.

Epidural steroid injections (ESIs) are a commonly utilized treatment for lumbosacral radicular pain caused by intervertebral disc herniation or stenosis. Although effective in certain patient populations, ESIs have been associated with serious complications, ...

“I want you out there every day selling Neurontin. … We all know Neurontin's not growing for adjunctive therapy [when it gets combined with another medication], besides that's not where the money is. Pain management, now that's money…That's where we need to be, holding their hand and whispering in their ear, Neurontin for pain, Neurontin [alone], Neurontin for bipolar, Neurontin for everything. I don't want to see a single patient coming off Neurontin before they've been up to at least 4800 mg/day. I don't want to hear that safety crap either, have you tried Neurontin, every one of you should take one just to see there is nothing, it's a great drug.”

Former Harvard Researcher Faked Sleep Apnea Study

Posted: April 13, 2009

A former Harvard researcher has admitted falsifying a medical study. According to Boston.com, Dr. Robert Fogel has been disciplined by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for faking data in a sleep apnea study funded by federal research grants.

This is the second time in recent months that a medical researcher has been caught falsifying a study. As we reported last month, medical journals have been asked to retract <"https://www.yourlawyer.com/practice_areas/defective_drugs">drug studies involving Vioxx, Celebrex, Lyrica and other drugs that were conducted by Dr. Scott S. Reuben of Baystate Medical Center.

Because of Reuben’s “research”, it had become routine for doctors to combine the use of painkillers like Celebrex and Lyrica for patients undergoing common procedures such as knee and hip replacements. Not surprisingly, Reuben has strong ties with the pharmaceutical industry. According to the Journal, he had been a paid speaker on behalf of Pfizer – the maker of Lyrica and Celebrex – and it paid for some of his research. Wyeth provided $10,000 in grant money to. Reuben from 2001 to 2003, the Journal said. Merck also funded some of Reuben’s work.

Fogel also has ties to the pharmaceutical industry. Since leaving Harvard, Fogel has been employed by Merck Research Laboratories, where he is now director of clinical research at its respiratory and allergy division in Rahway, N.J.

According to The Wall Street Journal, in 2006 Fogel apparently confessed to his former supervisor at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital that he had falsified data in the 2003 sleep apnea study. According to the Office of Research Integrity at HHS, Fogel:

• Changed/falsified roughly half of the physiologic data
• Fabricated roughly 20% of the anatomic data that were supposedly obtained from Computed Tomography (CT) images
• Changed/falsified 50 to 80 percent of the other anatomic data
• Changed/falsified roughly 40 to 50 percent of the sleep data so that those data would better conform to his hypothesis.
• Published some of the falsified and fabricated data in an abstract in the journal Sleep in 2001.

According to Boston.com, Fogel falsified the data so that it would conform with his hypothesis. The falsified paper concluded that the shape and volume of a person’s airway combines with obesity to make those patients more likely to suffer sleep apnea.

According to the Office of Research Integrity at HHS, Fogel has entered into a voluntary disciplinary settlement, in which he agreed, among other things, to be excluded from research funded by the US Public Health Service for three years unless he is actively supervised.

Fogel told the publication The Scientist that since his admission, Harvard’s office of research integrity reviewed 30 studies in which he was involved. He told The Scientist that the 2003 sleep apnea study was the only one that included fake data.

“What I did was obviously horrendously wrong,” Fogel told the magazine. “I never really thought through the consequences, and once I did this I got myself into a loop that I found I couldn’t get out of.”

Among the findings of interest are the fact that the FDA rejected the application for gabapentin for diabetic peripheral neuropathy based on the risk versus benefit profile of that drug in the clinical trials that were submitted by the manufacturer. Additionally, both the comparative effectiveness trials as well as the studies used by the FDA tend to be short in duration and show only modest pain benefits for the gabapentinoids. The placebo response in these trials was frequently one-third to one-half as great as the pain benefit demonstrated by the gabapentinoid.

The psychosomatic approach to medically unexplained symptoms, myalgic encephalomyelitis and chronic fatigue syndrome (MUS/ME/CFS) is critically reviewed using scientific criteria. Based on the 'Biopsychosocial Model', the psychosomatic theory proposes that patients' dysfunctional beliefs, deconditioning and attentional biases cause or make illness worse, disrupt therapies, and lead to preventable deaths. The evidence reviewed suggests that none of these psychosomatic hypotheses is empirically supported. The lack of robust supportive evidence together with the use of fal-lacious causal assumptions, inappropriate and harmful therapies, broken scientific principles, repeated methodological flaws and an unwillingness to share data all give the appearance of cargo cult science. The psychosomatic approach needs to be replaced by a scientific, biologically grounded approach to MUS/ME/CFS that can be expected to provide patients with appropriate care and treatments. Patients with MUS/ME/CFS and their families have not been treated with the dignity, respect and care that is their human right. Patients with MUS/ME/CFS and their families could consider a class action legal case against the injuring parties.