Medical Research — Science or Science Fiction?

‘It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgement of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my 2 decades as an editor of The New England Medical Journal.’ Marcia Angell, former editor, The New England Journal of Medicine

In an ideal world, medical research would be scientific, rigorous, objective, independent, and reported without bias. Sadly, that’s not the world we live in. Until the 1980s, the bulk of medical research was carried out in government and university labs. Then the budgets of governments and universities came under increasing pressure, while the profits of drug makers exploded. As a result they sponsored more and more research and clinical trials, and more and more researchers became dependent on pharmaceutical industry funding.

What followed was predictable, and I quote Marcia Angell again since the The New England Journal of Medicine has been the number 1 medical journal in the world for some decades.

‘Over the past 2 decades the pharmaceutical Industry has moved very far from its original high purpose of discovering and producing useful new drugs. Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to coopt every institution that might stand in its way, including the US Congress, the FDA, academic medical centres, and the medical profession…