Placebo fraud rocks the very foundation of modern medical science; thousands of clinical trials invalidated!

30 October 2010

This is a BIGGIE.

Consider the BILLION$ spent worldwide on pharmaceuticals pushed by the
‘Big Pharma drug barons’?

How can the public have confidence in the ‘tests’ that are supposed to prove the safety and efficacy of these pharmaceutical products if ‘clinical trials have been faked with placebos’ rendering ‘thousands of trials invalid?

www.naturalnews.com/030209_placebo_medical_fraud.html

Placebo fraud rocks the very foundation of modern medical science; thousands of clinical trials invalidated

Thursday, October 28, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of Natural News.com (See all articles…)

(Natural News) You know all those thousands of clinical trials conducted over the last few decades comparing pharmaceuticals to placebo pills? Well, it turns out all those studies must now be
completely thrown out as utterly non-scientific. And why?

Because the placebos used in the studies weren’t really placebos at all, rendering the studies scientifically invalid.

This is the conclusion from researchers at the University of California who published their findings in the October issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine. They reviewed 167 placebo-controlled
trials published in peer-reviewed medical journals in 2008 and 2009 and found that 92 percent of those trials never even described the ingredients of their placebo pills.

Why is this important? Because placebo pills are supposed to be inert. But nothing is inert, it turns out. Even so-called “sugar pills” contain sugar, obviously. And sugar isn’t inert. If you’re running a clinical trial on diabetics, testing the effectiveness of adiabetes drug versus a placebo then obviously your clinical trial is going to make the diabetes drug look better than placebo if you use sugar pills as your placebo.

Some placebo pills use olive oil which may actually improve heart health. Other placebo pills use partially-hydrogenated oils which harm heart health. Yet only 8 percent of clinical trials bothered to list
the placebo ingredients at all!
…………………………………………….

(Full article later in this post).

Abstract of the study
Here’s some of the text from the abstract of this study published in
the Annals of Internal Medicine
(http://www.annals.org/content/153/8…)

What’s in Placebos: Who Knows? Analysis of Randomized, Controlled Trials

1. Beatrice A. Golomb, MD, PhD;
2. Laura C. Erickson, BS;
3. Sabrina Koperski, BS;
4. Deanna Sack, BS;
5. Murray Enkin, MD; and
6. Jeremy Howick, PhD

Background: No regulations govern placebo composition. Thecomposition of placebos can influence trial outcomes and merits reporting.

Purpose: To assess how often investigators specify the composition of placebos in randomized, placebo-controlled trials.

Data Sources: 4 English-language general and internal medicine journals with high impact factors.

Study Selection: 3 reviewers screened titles and abstracts of the journals to identify randomized, placebo-controlled trials published from January 2008 to December 2009.

Data Extraction: Reviewers independently abstracted data from the introduction and methods sections of identified articles, recording treatment type (pill, injection, or other) and whether placebo
composition was stated. Discrepancies were resolved by consensus.

Data Synthesis: Most studies did not disclose the composition of the study placebo. Disclosure was less common for pills than for injections and other treatments (8.2% vs. 26.7%; P = 0.002).

Limitation: Journals with high impact factors may not be representative.

Conclusion: Placebos were seldom described in randomized, controlled trials of pills or capsules. Because the nature of the placebo can influence trial outcomes, placebo formulation should be disclosed in reports of placebo-controlled trials.

Primary Funding Source: University of California Foundation Fund
3929 — Medical Reasoning.

Articles Related to This Article:
. Psych Drug Shocker: Antidepressant Drugs Work No Better than Placebo; Big Pharma Hoax Finally Exposed

. The Case for Homeopathic Medicine: Consider the Historical and Scientific Evidence

. Acupuncture Proven to have an Effect beyond Placebo, Harvard Study Concludes

. Placebo Effect Regularly Beats Pharmaceutical Drugs

. Placebo treatments much stronger than previously thought

. New Study Shows Genes may be Responsible for Placebo Effect

_______________________________________________________________________________

Hello Fellow Placebos,

This is a very well put together article.

The sadness that abounds circles around my transcription of Crookshank
who was telling us 120 years ago the same things we are saying today
regarding vaccination. Dr. Theron Randolph came out against Placebos
in the 1960s and also attempted a presentation before Congress on the
dangers of CORN DEXTROSE used in Intravenous Solutions since he had
evidence that it could provoke psychiatric derangements. Of course
the Corn Council shut him out of his testimony.

Corn sugar, beet sugar, cane sugar. It does matter if a placebo is
made out of sugar but it also matters which source the sugar comes
from.

If you are diligent enough to read to the bottom you will see that
there is an implication of genes in the placebo effect, but what is
never talked about is that it is not inheritance at issue but the
epigenetic effect of triggers like placebos that are not placebos.

Definitely Black Magick at work here.

______________________________________________________

http://www.naturalnews.com/030209_placebo_medical_fraud.html
Placebo fraud rocks the very foundation of modern medical
science; thousands of clinical trials invalidated
Thursday, October 28, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles…)

(NaturalNews) You know all those thousands of clinical trials
conducted over the last few decades comparing pharmaceuticals to
placebo pills? Well, it turns out all those studies must now be
completely thrown out as utterly non-scientific. And why? Because the
placebos used in the studies weren’t really placebos at all, rendering
the studies scientifically invalid.

This is the conclusion from researchers at the University of
California who published their findings in the October issue of the
Annals of Internal Medicine. They reviewed 167 placebo-controlled
trials published in peer-reviewed medical journals in 2008 and 2009
and found that 92 percent of those trials never even described the
ingredients of their placebo pills.

Why is this important? Because placebo pills are supposed to be
inert. But nothing is inert, it turns out. Even so-called “sugar
pills” contain sugar, obviously. And sugar isn’t inert. If you’re
running a clinical trial on diabetics, testing the effectiveness of a
diabetes drug versus a placebo then obviously your clinical trial is
going to make the diabetes drug look better than placebo if you use
sugar pills as your placebo.

Some placebo pills use olive oil which may actually improve heart
health. Other placebo pills use partially-hydrogenated oils which harm
heart health. Yet only 8 percent of clinical trials bothered to list
the placebo ingredients at all!

Stay with me on this placebo issue… because it gets even more bizarre…

There are no FDA rules regarding placebos in clinical trials
It turns out there are absolutely no FDA rules regarding the choice
or composition of placebos used in clinical trials. Technically, a
clinical trial director could use eye of newt or lizard’s legs as
placebo and would not even be required to mention such nefarious
details in the trial results. That would cause trouble, trouble, boil
and bubble! (Shakespeare reference for all you literary fans…)

We already know that clinical trials are rife with fraud. Most of
the clinical trials used by pharmaceutical companies to win FDA
approval of their drugs, for example, are funded by pharmaceutical
companies. And it is a verifiable fact that most clinical trials tend
to find results that favor the financial interests of whatever
organization paid for them. So what’s to stop Big Pharma from scheming
up the perfect placebo that would harm patients just enough to make
their own drugs look good by comparison?

Fact: Placebos are usually provided by the very same company funding
the clinical trial! Do you detect any room for fraud in this equation?

How drug companies can fake clinical trials with selected placebo pills
Placebo performance strongly influences whether drugs are approved
by the FDA, by the way. As the key piece of information on its
regulatory approval decisions, the FDA wants to know whether a drug
works better than placebo. That’s the primary requirement! If they
work even 5% better than placebo, they are said to be “efficacious”
(meaning they “work”). This is true even if the placebo was selected
and used specifically to make the drug look good by comparison.

You see, if there are no regulations or rules regarding placebo,
then none of the placebo-controlled clinical trials are scientifically
valid.

It’s amazing how medical scientists will get rough and tough when
attacking homeopathy, touting how their own medicine is “based on the
gold standard of scientific evidence!” and yet when it really comes
down to it, their scientific evidence is just a jug of quackery mixed
with a pinch of wishful thinking and a wisp of pseudoscientific
gobbledygook, all framed in the language of scientism by members of
the FDA who wouldn’t recognize real science if they tripped and fell
into a vat full of it.

Big Pharma and the FDA have based their entire system of scientific
evidence on a placebo fraud! And if the placebo isn’t a placebo, then
the scientific evidence isn’t scientific.

Oh, but wait. They’ll call it science because they wish the placebo
to be a placebo. Yep — the clinical researchers are now psychics,
mediums and fortune tellers who simply decree that little pill of
olive oil to “be a placebo!” while waving their hands over it in a
gesture borrowed from David Copperfield.

James Randi may have never seen a psychic transmute lead into gold,
but he’s no doubt seen doctors transmute biochemically active
substances into totally inert materials merely by wishing them so!
It’s so amazing!

And this brings me to the really interesting “how-to” part of this article…

How to make your own placebo just like clinical researchers do
Are you wondering how to make your own FDA-approved, scientifically
validated placebo? It’s easier than you think.

Step 1 – Find something shaped like a pill. It could be a pill full
of olive oil, white sugar, palm oil, fluoridated water, chalk dust,
synthetic chemicals or just about anything you can imagine.

Step 2 – Close your eyes and get ready to concentrate.

Step 3 – This is the important part – Repeat out loud five times
while turning counter-clockwise, “I am a scientific researcher
practicing evidence-based medicine!” You must say this until you
really, truly believe it. If you don’t believe it strongly enough, the
placebo effect will be ruined.

Step 4 – Thrust your palm in the direction of the placebo pills and
shout, at the top of your voice, “You are now placebo!” You may feel a
shiver of energy coursing through your body. That’s the power of
placebo reaching out to the pills.

The process is now complete. You may now use these placebo pills in
any clinical trial and expect full approval of such use by your
colleagues, famous medical journals and FDA regulators. (This is not a
joke. This is the state of the art today in conventional medicine.)

Hope also has a huge role to place in all this. The more you hope
your placebos are really placebos, the better results you’ll get. In
fact, in reporting on this whole fiasco, the lead researcher of the
study uncovering all this, Dr Beatric Golomb, said, “We can only hope
that this hasn’t seriously systematically affected medical treatment.”

But of course it has. (And by the way, no disrespect toward Dr
Golomb. She deserves kudos for being willing to tackle this subject
which will no doubt make her very unpopular among the cult of
Scientism as practiced by conventional medical researchers today.)

How to improve your clinical trial results
For improved results, try to use the most harmful placebo substances
you can. For example, in real clinical trials involving AIDS patients
— who tend to be lactose intolerant — researchers have used pills
made of, guess what? Lactose!

That’s sort of like running a clinical trial on a cure for heroin
addiction and using heroin as the placebo, isn’t it? Gee, somehow our
drug worked “better than placebo.” Funny how that works, isn’t it?

And if you still don’t get the results you want, just start
inventing your own data like other clinical trial researchers do.
Remember Dr Scott Reuben? This highly-respected clinical trial
researcher faked at least twenty-one clinical trials for Big Pharma
(http://www.naturalnews.com/028194_S…). His fraudulent clinical
trials are still being cited to sell prescription medications!

Heck, who needs placebo when you can just invent the data?

Come to think of it, who needs science when you can just use
anything you want and call it placebo in the first place?

Conventional medicine operates clinical trials in the same way that
banks and securities firms handle mortgage documents. They all just
sort of make things up as they go along, committing felony crimes on a
daily basis while hoping nobody notices. On that note, check out this
amazing story by Greg Hunter called The Perfect No-Prosecution Crime
(http://usawatchdog.com/the-perfect-…).

Where on the skeptics when it comes to Big Pharma science fraud?
Seriously, you just gotta love the state of medical science today.
I’ve never watched a more hilarious group of nincompoops reassure each
other that they’re all so scientific while practicing the most
quack-ridden chicanery imaginable. The stuff being pulled off today in
the name of Big Pharma’s clinical trials makes psychic detectives and
tarot card readers look downright scientifically gifted by comparison.

It really makes you wonder about so-called “skeptics,” doesn’t it?
If they’re skeptical of homeopathy, tarot cards, psychic mediums and
people who claim they can levitate, I can at least understand the urge
to ask tough questions about all these things. I ask tough questions,
too, especially when people tell me they’ve seen ghosts or spirits
coming back from the dead or other unexplained phenomena. (And I’ve
already publicly denounced so-called “psychic surgery” which it quite
obviously little more than sleight-of-hand trickery combined with
animal blood.)

But most conventional skeptics never step out of bounds of their
“safety zone” of popular topics for which skepticism may be safely
expressed. They won’t dare ask skeptical questions about the quack
science backing the pharmaceutical industry, for example. Nor will
they ask tough questions about vaccines, or mammography, or
chemotherapy. And you’d be hard pressed to find anything more steeped
in outright fraudulent quackery than the pharmaceutical industry as
operated today (and the cancer branch of it in particular).

That’s why I’m skeptical about the skeptics. If a skeptic doesn’t
question the loosey goosey pseudoscience practiced by Big Pharma, then
they really have no credibility as a skeptic. You can’t be selectively
skeptical about some things but then a fall-for-anything fool on other
scams just because they’re backed by drug companies.

But getting back to this study in particular…

Abstract of the study
Here’s some of the text from the abstract of this study published in
the Annals of Internal Medicine
(http://www.annals.org/content/153/8…)

What’s in Placebos: Who Knows? Analysis of Randomized, Controlled Trials

1. Beatrice A. Golomb, MD, PhD;
2. Laura C. Erickson, BS;
3. Sabrina Koperski, BS;
4. Deanna Sack, BS;
5. Murray Enkin, MD; and
6. Jeremy Howick, PhD

Background: No regulations govern placebo composition. The
composition of placebos can influence trial outcomes and merits
reporting.

Purpose: To assess how often investigators specify the composition
of placebos in randomized, placebo-controlled trials.

Data Sources: 4 English-language general and internal medicine
journals with high impact factors.

Study Selection: 3 reviewers screened titles and abstracts of the
journals to identify randomized, placebo-controlled trials published
from January 2008 to December 2009.

Data Extraction: Reviewers independently abstracted data from the
introduction and methods sections of identified articles, recording
treatment type (pill, injection, or other) and whether placebo
composition was stated. Discrepancies were resolved by consensus.

Data Synthesis: Most studies did not disclose the composition of the
study placebo. Disclosure was less common for pills than for
injections and other treatments (8.2% vs. 26.7%; P = 0.002).

Limitation: Journals with high impact factors may not be representative.

Conclusion: Placebos were seldom described in randomized, controlled
trials of pills or capsules. Because the nature of the placebo can
influence trial outcomes, placebo formulation should be disclosed in
reports of placebo-controlled trials.

Primary Funding Source: University of California Foundation Fund
3929 — Medical Reasoning.

Articles Related to This Article:
. Psych Drug Shocker: Antidepressant Drugs Work No Better than
Placebo; Big Pharma Hoax Finally Exposed

. The Case for Homeopathic Medicine: Consider the Historical and
Scientific Evidence

. Acupuncture Proven to have an Effect beyond Placebo, Harvard
Study Concludes

. Placebo Effect Regularly Beats Pharmaceutical Drugs

. Placebo treatments much stronger than previously thought

. New Study Shows Genes may be Responsible for Placebo Effect