"Evidence-based medicine has been corrupted by corporate interests, failed regulation and commercialization of academia," argue authors in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). Last week I shared the video of Russel Brand in which he discusses the BMJ Editorial "We need raw data, now!". That article was written by Peter Doshi, senior editor of the widely respected scientific journal.
There was another daring piece in the same magazine recently, by other authors: The illusion of evidence based medicine. Fortunately, the question marks about what we know as "Scientific Integrity" are not only put on virusvaria.nl. (for a practical step-by-step check on Scientific Integrity in the Netherlands on the basis of the corona crisis, see this article). In the academic world, some apparently think the same way.
Corruption
If scientific integrity is an illusion, we are talking about a corrupted system. When it comes to corruption, people quickly think of things like bribery and self-enrichment, or intentional crimes. That is unjustified. A computer file or a hard drive can also be corrupt. Then you have to perform an 'integrity check'. Integrity and corruption should be mutually exclusive.
A system can also be corrupt. Imagine: a billionaire has blind faith in vaccinations. He sponsors research that is gladly carried out by scientists who share his enthusiasm. Somewhere in the chain that arises in this way, there is of course a wrong link that deliberately manages to present results just a little more favorably than they should. But that scientist also wants to improve the world, it is a man or woman of integrity who wants to save lives. So then you have people of integrity in a corrupt and therefore failing system, corrupted by only good intentions.
Look at the RIVM: they had figures presented on the corona dashboard under the influence of an inspired minister and did not make a scandal out of it, they just let him do his thing and did not bring anything to court, according to the WOB documents. Were there evil intentions behind it? Probably not, on the contrary. Ideology can thus be at the basis of a corrupt system. By the way, I don't want to rule out the possibility that financial interests and even bribery play a role, especially in such a 'wrong link'.
KOLs
The BMJ article mentions KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders), albeit only in the context of the academic community. Don't forget that someone like Ab Osterhaus is also a Key Opinion Leader. In fact, all the familiar faces who sit down night after night on talk shows are 'KOLs' with the sole purpose of 'leading' 'opinions'.
Through advisory posts, they lobby the government in a certain direction. At the same time, support for the recommended policy is created through the uncritical media. That's easy: celebrities such as government advisors in times of crisis are good for the ratings. Nonsensical 'solutions' are presented and applauded as a scientific approach, even though there is no substantiation for them and the most important assumptions are therefore unfounded. The viewing public is warmed up to the solutions promoted by 'experts'. As a result, there is political support - 'democratic' so OK - for the current policy. Various MPs like to cackle along with their supporters and they also think they are informed because they follow the talk shows. This completes the illusion of a democratic system.
The fact that the government plays this way is of course very dubious. (If you doubt whether the government really works like this, I refer you to the WOB facts (video). If you are wondering how all this can come about: read the BMJ article, translation will follow.)
The fact that some scientists fight for their position in an unscientific way is bad -because not scientifically honest- but human. However, the fact that the media did not put a stop to this is unforgivable. God forbid that a foreign power wants to gain influence in the Netherlands, because if it plays it cleverly, Hilversum will undoubtedly be at the forefront of getting the population on board.
We see how government communication becomes propaganda when we look at the twitter accounts of some journalists and OMT members. Belgian corona information officer Marc van Ranst already caused a stir in 2020 with a Presentation (on video) in which he links marketing techniques to scaremongering with health threats – with the help of the media. No doubt with the best intentions.
"The face mask and the one-and-a-half-meter rule will be abolished. Only in the public transport a face mask remains mandatory because it is difficult to keep a distance of one and a half meters there."
Surely this violation of logic is definitive proof that all common sense has been set to zero in the virus hysteria, including among policy-making scientists. This was accepted as a standing policy without any problems. I wouldn't be surprised if a 'science journalist' like Diederik Jekel even explained it so that it gained extra credibility. The mass formation is complete.
FDA, EMA, MEB, Lareb: regulators and inspectorates participate
The BMJ article also discusses regulators and inspections. The most important institutes that have to monitor health are largely financed by companies that have an interest in lenient treatment and a blind eye to his time. Illustrative in this regard is an article on the position of the FDA (translation here), 45% of which depends on the companies it is supposed to control.
The EMA website states that approx. 86% of the money from "fees and charges" Comes. Who pays, decides. The pharmaceutical companies pay the bill for the fees and charges and thus fill almost the entire EMA budget. Who checked whom again?
In America, the practices are even more abject than here, if you have to believe Robert Kenndy Jr. in his book The Real Anthony Fauci. The e-book costs something like 3 Euro. If you want to search for it, use DuckDuckGo. If you don't know the title exactly, Google is not really helpful. That aside, just to indicate how independence is crumbling worldwide and how powerful institutions are clumping together not only in the academic world.
In any case, the following shocking conversation with a senior FDA official is very instructive. He says (in front of a hidden camera) that a critical attitude within the FDA is not appreciated: "Then you're marked". The FDA is the authority that can make or break the marketing of new drugs. So that is too often making instead of breaking. It seems that people have also been too lenient with the Covid vaccines.
Our own Central Bureau for Medicines and side effect notification centre Lareb are both funded by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. The Minister went through the motions to achieve his monomaniacal goal. Vaccination was the only way out. Who is going to antagonize their boss with reservations about safety or effectiveness – when the all-powerful FDA has already approved everything? Only someone who is looking for a position elsewhere can do that. And he doesn't get a hearing because he is dismissed as a querulant. We see them on Bitchute, among the 'conspiracy thinkers'.
Suppressing academic or non-academic dissent
How the universities have been corrupted and the fact that dissent is collectively and demonstratively suppressed (including non-academic dissent, think of the handcuffing of Willem Engel) becomes more plausible if you understand the constellation as described in BMJ.
Below is the Dutch translation of the English article from the British Medical Journal. When they talk about "previously confidential documents" they mean the Pfizer Papers: documents demanded by the court regarding the studies that formed the basis of the FDA's approval of the Covid vaccines.
The Illusion of Evidence Based Medicine
Evidence-based medicine has been corrupted by corporate interests, failed regulations and commercialization of academia, authors argue in the British Medical Journal.
The advent of evidence-based medicine was a paradigm shift that was intended to provide a solid scientific basis for medicine. However, the validity of this new paradigm depends on reliable data from clinical trials, most of which are conducted by the pharmaceutical industry and reported in the name of senior academics. The release into the public domain of previously confidential pharmaceutical industry documents has provided the medical community with valuable insight into the extent to which industry-sponsored clinical trials are misrepresented.1234Until this problem is solved, evidence-based medicine will remain an illusion.
The philosophy of Popper's critical rationalism argued for the integrity of science and its role in an open, democratic society. A science of true integrity would be one in which practitioners are cautious not to cling to cherished hypotheses and take seriously the outcome of rigorous experiments.5However, this ideal is threatened by companies, in which financial interests outweigh the public interest. Medicine is largely dominated by a small number of very large pharmaceutical companies that compete for market share but are effectively united in their efforts to expand that market. The short-term incentive for biomedical research due to privatization has been welcomed by proponents of the free market, but the unintended long-term consequences for medicine are serious. Scientific progress is thwarted by "ownership of data and knowledge" because the industry suppresses negative research findings, fails to report adverse events, and does not share raw data with the academic research community. Patients are dying due to the adverse impact of commercial interests on the research agenda, universities and regulators.
The pharmaceutical industry's responsibility to its shareholders means prioritizing their hierarchical power structures, product loyalty, and public relations propaganda over scientific integrity. While universities have always been elite institutions susceptible to influence through endowments, they have long claimed to be guardians of society's truth and moral conscience. But in the face of inadequate public funding, they have adopted a neoliberal market approach, actively seeking pharmaceutical funding on commercial terms. As a result, university departments become tools of industry: through corporate control of the research agenda and ghostwriting of medical journal articles and continuing medical education, academics become agents for the promotion of commercial products.6When scandals involving the industry-academe partnership come to light in the mainstream media, trust in academic institutions is weakened and the vision of an open society is betrayed.
The corporate university also compromises the concept of academic leadership. Deans who reached their leadership positions on the basis of distinguished contributions to their disciplines have been replaced in some places by fundraisers and academic managers, who are forced to demonstrate their profitability or judged on their ability to attract corporate sponsors. In medicine, those who succeed in academia are preferably key opinion leaders (KOLs in marketing jargon), whose careers can be fostered by the opportunities offered by the industry. Potential KOLs are selected based on a complex set of profiling activities carried out by companies. For example, doctors are selected based on their influence on the prescribing habits of other doctors.7KOLs are highly sought after by the industry because of this influence and for the prestige that their university affiliation brings to the branding of the company's products. In addition to paid members of pharmaceutical advisory boards and speakers bureaus, KOLs present results from industry trials at medical conferences and in continuing medical education. Instead of acting as independent, impartial scientists and critically evaluating a drug's performance, they become what marketing managers call "product champions."
Ironically, industry-sponsored KOLs seem to enjoy many of the benefits of academic freedom, supported by their universities, industry, and journal editors for expressing their opinions, even if those views are inconsistent with the real evidence. While universities fail to correct the science's misrepresentations of such collaborations, critics of the industry face rejections from journals, legal threats, and the potential destruction of their careers.8This uneven playing field is exactly what occupied Popper when he wrote about suppression and control of the means of science communication.9The preservation of institutions intended to promote scientific objectivity and impartiality (i.e., public laboratories, independent scientific journals, and congresses) is entirely at the mercy of political and commercial power; Vested interests will always outweigh the rationality of the evidence.10
Regulators receive industry funding and use industry-funded and conducted trials to approve drugs, without seeing the raw data in most cases. What confidence do we have in a system in which pharmaceutical companies are allowed to "review their own tests" instead of having their products tested by independent experts as part of a public regulatory system? Unwitting governments and dependent regulators are unlikely to initiate necessary changes to remove research from the industry altogether and clean up publishing models that rely on revenue from reprinting, advertising, and sponsorship revenue.
Our proposals for reforms include:
- decouple regulators from funding by pharmaceutical companies;
- impose taxes on pharmaceutical companies to allow public funding of independent trials;
- Perhaps most importantly: anonymized research data at the individual patient level that is placed on sufficiently accessible websites together with research protocols, so that third parties, whether nominated themselves or commissioned by health technology agencies, can rigorously evaluate the methodology and research results.
With the necessary changes to the consent forms for the study, participants can require the investigating party to make the data freely available. The open and transparent publication of data is in line with our moral obligation to study participants – after all, they are real people, who have been involved in risky treatment and have the right to expect that the results of their participation will be used in accordance with the principles of scientific rigor. The interests of the industry in terms of their privacy and their intellectual property rights should not be the determining factor.
Dr. John Campbell went through the BMJ article in over 30 minutes.
More worth reading on this subject.
(Thanks Bert Vdf Wassink)
An ingenious illusion
Looking for a visual I came across the image below (I added the text). It is the winner of the Best Illusion of the Year Contest 2021. At first I thought it was not a mirror but an empty window frame. However, it is indeed a mirror. If you think you are a keen observer, look at the #2.
You are now only talking about matters related to Covid and everything that is happening and has happened around it.
I used to be a scientist myself and until my retirement in 2013 there was certainly no corruption in evidence-based medicine or products in the medical market that are used on patients and required an inspection or permission.
My American colleagues often said when initiating a study: "First the animal experiments, then we try it on Canadians, then Europeans and only then on our own people.
Covid has seriously deferred things, but that is mainly due to governments sowing fear among scientists who are afraid of no longer getting a "grand". This is distributed in our country by the same government through NWO programmes. (our system is always better than being dependent on lottery money)
Corona has brought all kinds of things to light. The compromised system was really not set up in a few months, at the beginning of 2020. I absolutely believe that there are 'clean' bubbles of honest scientists, but anecdotality is unfortunately not the strongest form of evidence.
That of those 'grants' (with a 't'; you may not have had much to do with it) is especially important in the US. The academic world is also creaking under financial dependencies in the Netherlands. As far as I am concerned, the problem here is mainly regulators and (government) institutes that should monitor things. Civil servants who are given a scientific status to support what their bosses (Ministries) are planning. Or 'independent' institutes (Lareb, EMA) that are financially dependent on the industry that they are supposed to keep short. It is an unhealthy situation.
I would like to respond very briefly by citing the oxycodone scandal and associated lawsuits. This scandal took place well before corona, was based on shoving disturbing data under the carpet and outright lies about it. The result: hundreds of thousands of (indirect) fatalities and, above all, many billions in profit. No.. Pharmacy has known very large smelly rotten spots for much longer than today.
It was at least thirty years ago that a large pharmaceutical company gave exorbitant, decadent parties every year at a castle in Limburg for doctors and other drug prescribers. These were regularly called forward to receive an award, because they had achieved the highest turnover in medicine x, y or z in the past year, especially psychopharmaceuticals I seem to remember. Legalized drug trafficking is my immodest opinion on this kind of practice. Both in the research phase (a la oxycodone) and in the distribution phase (parties).
Dear Mr. Eggink, Your statement does not seem very convincing when looking at the place that medicines occupy on the list of main causes of death. Also the idea that there would be nothing wrong before 2013 may be your observation, but the damages that have been paid out after a long tug-of-war and then only to a part of the victims of medication use also speak a different language over the years. Your personal observation, regardless of whether it is correct, can certainly not be used as a standard, in my opinion. If reliable scientists are afraid, then especially of the influence of the sponsors.
I quote from the above: "God forbid that a foreign power wants to gain influence in the Netherlands, because if it plays it cleverly, Hilversum will undoubtedly be at the forefront of getting the population on board. "
Well that's exactly what's going on and has been for quite a long time. The EU is doing this to a very large extent. More and more control is flowing away to this. In the meantime, encouraged by the EU, incredible capital flows from EU savings countries to EU debtor countries. Without a penny changing hands. But the unprecedented and EU-driven inflation is exactly what leads to this involuntary and undemocratically achieved redistribution. Other dubiously enforced interventions are the international QR code, an undemocratic EU president who is waffling out of turn who wants to make forced vaccination a topic of discussion, and so on.
Another party, although not a power and apparently not supported as such / openly by the media, is in my opinion the WEF. A very democracy-dangerous private society and very scary. Not themselves perhaps, but many of their ideas are well swallowed by the media. So much is now coming out about these people that I wonder why there is not yet a bunch of self-respecting investigative journalists making mincemeat of this scary club and its tentacles.
I had first said "if the Germans come up with a plan again". Unfortunately, lessons from recent history are counterproductive, so I decided to make it more topical: "if a German comes up with a plan again". But I didn't do it either... The trends you identify are unmistakable.
Very very good piece, Anton! Especially because it provides insight into how the corrupted pyramid could have come into being. After all, a rotten system is much more complex than just a bunch of grabbers who want the worst for humanity.
As for Eggink's reaction about the absence of corruption until 2013. That is a completely demonstrable misrepresentation of the facts. As early as 2015, Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, stated "science has taken a dark turn". He found the level of the investigations abominable. That statement was confirmed by Marcia Angell; She called the level of the studies: "the sad state of peer-reviewed publication" and clarified this with the statement:
'It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.'
Dick Bijl, editor-in-chief of the Geneesmiddelenbulletin for many years, is just as pessimistic:
He went through 25,000 scientific studies and what he read does not soothe him. So much sloppy research, flawed statistics, distorted results and hidden side effects that he has started to question the right to exist of many medicines.
Samengevat: Ik zie de uitspraken van (hoofd)redacteuren van de meest gerenommeerde medical journals ter wereld als leidend. Daarmee ook de ultieme debunk van wat Eggink hierboven stelt.