Dr Ben Goldacre’s AllTrials Or AllLies? Hiding Info On Killer Medical Drugs For Pharma Profit & Misleading 80,000 Supporters About the AllTrials Campaign

This is about trying to keep children and adults safe from killer drugs in the UK, USA and worldwide.

Dr Ben Goldacre’s AllTrials campaign is looking more and more like a front to ensure Pharma can keep on killing people for money with dangerous drugs and cover up the scientific data which shows it.  On one side is Dr Ben Goldacre screaming like a shrill shill “its lies, all lies” and little else, [like facts to back his denials up].  All Dr Goldacre needs to do is avoid answering the criticisms to convince people “its true, all true“.

On the other side is drug safety expert Professor David Healy setting out facts on his latest blog with his take on them in a series on Goldacre’s “AllTrials” campaign which he likened previously to a Trojan Horse: Sense about Science: Follow the Lawsuit June 16, 2014.  

The impression Dr Goldacre gives is that he is little more than the drug industry’s front man.  Goldacre is supported by not-for-profit “Sense About Science” [which seems anything but sense about anything].  Sense About Science is an industry founded not-for-profit who are really running the AllTrials campaign and not Goldacre.  It looks like at least some of the 80,000 people who have subscribed as AllTrials supporters on the back of Dr Goldacre’s efforts and of those who donated over £40,000 [US$70,000] to Goldacre’s fundraising efforts for Sense About Science have been duped.

Goldacre has posted on Healy’s blog claiming repeatedly that Healy’s facts and conclusions are all lies.  Goldacre stamps his little foot  and screams and screams, showing himself up whilst in the process convincing the reader he has no answers to the criticisms.  [If Goldacre had any, you will not see them in his comments on Healy’s blog.  See Goldacre’s most recent comments here and here. So much for Goldacre’s claims to believing in scientific debate and peer review when he does not answer challenges with facts.]

Professor David Healy reveals information about how GlaxoSmithKline has been hiding information about killer drugs which it presents as safe and effective when they are not, like Paroxetine which causes children to commit suicide when supposedly meant to treat depression.   Professor Healy states:

Right now today GSK are refusing to tell the children who have been injured by their drug in Study 329 that they were injured by their drug.  Tomorrow GSK will do the same and tomorrow and tomorrow. ….. The reason GSK, Pfizer, Lilly and AbbVie don’t want anyone to get access to the data is so that no-one can access the damage.  No-one can find out about the Dan Markingsons who die or are injured in company trials.  They are not doing this out of a concern for Dan Markingson’s confidentiality.  They are doing it in order to avoid being sued.”

GlaxoSmithKline signed up to AllTrials on its own terms. GSK negotiated their way onto AllTrials by specifying what they would and would not reveal.

If you thought AllTrials was about getting all drug trial data published and so opened up to scientific scrutiny, like Dr Ben Goldacre and cronies want you to think, then you and 80,000 other individuals who publicly backed AllTrials on that basis and some who donated towards over £40,000 [US$70,000] at Goldacre’s exhortations, seem to be wrong, judging by the information Professor Healy reveals.

Professor Healy also quotes evidence given by Tracey Brown of Sense About Science to an English Parliamentary investigation and another well-informed medical commentator also explains in detail here. 

Tracey Brown was asked by the Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee on 15 May 2013:

Ms Brown, just to be clear, is the aim of the campaign to have all four levels published?

Tracey Brown: No, …… What we are finding out is that “full” means something different for different people ….“

Different people?  Now who could she mean?  GSK signed up in February 2013 and this evidence was in May 2013. And Ms Brown says “What we are finding out“.  So Sense About Science [ie. Ms Brown] was in the process of finding out from GSK – an organisation instrumental in founding and originally funding Sense About Science and thus getting Ms Brown her job [after she abruptly jumped ship from Marxism to back capital following the end of the Cold War] that GSK do not want full scientific disclosure of the data.

If you gave money to Dr Ben Goldacre’s fund-raising campaign and feel you were duped are you going to email Dr Goldacre and ask for your money back?  How about unsubscribing from AllTrials?  What chance is there that Marxist Ms Brown will willingly let you do that?

Dr Ben Goldacre has cultivated a public image of a tousled unkempt irresponsible geeky young man to appeal particularly to the under 25 year-old childless males and the over fifty men who apparently predominantly populate the ranks on sites like Dr David Gorski’s ScienceBlogs blog and Dr Ben Goldacre’s BadScience Forum.  These are sites where you can see rampant untrammeled internet abuse, bullying and harassment of anyone who does not agree with them by one too many of those who infest those sites.

And now what we seem to be seeing, in our interpretation, is the cultivation of a particular image of Dr Ben Goldacre who seems to be fronting industry manipulation through the internet and social media by use of the such an image.  What else can it be?  Professor Healy has given Dr Goldacre numerous opportunities to comment and set the record straight. Dr Goldacre seems to respond with a lack of facts mixed with his brand of bullying and accusations and not much else.

To make up your own mind read yourself the exchanges between David Healy, Ben Goldacre of AllTrials, and Tracey Brown of Sense about Science and their own comments see Sense about Science: Follow the Rhetoric, Sense about Science: First Admit no Harm, Sense about Science: Follow the Lawsuit.  A major issue is GSK’s signing up to AllTrials and its appearance of being a Trojan Horse.

Here on CHS we declare an interest.  We do not believe anything Dr Goldacre has to say about these matters and we certainly do not trust him any further than a dead possum can throw him.

Sense About Science – Dr Ben Goldacre’s Industry Founded Backers Exposed

If you want priceless “must read” stuff then Sense about Science: First Admit no Harm June 9, 2014 is yet another in a series of sensible, straight-talking tough blog posts from mainstream medicine’s drug safety expert Professor David Healy. This is a second post exploring Sense about Science.  The first post is here: Follow the Rhetoric.

Anyone interested in Pharma will know about its ability to Astroturf – to create patient organizations whose role is to promote an illness or subvert an existing one.  Creating awareness of conditions sells drugs.

Less well known is what happens at a higher Astral level.  You can’t sell a product that gets a bad reputation or is removed from the market.  The marketing mission at this meta-level is to risk manage by influencing the debate on Risk.

You do this by setting up think tanks, hiring ex-regulators, academics and others, capturing the regulatory system, and working with a body with a name like Sense about Science.

The regulators advise you on how to get an indication for a drug even though it doesn’t work for that. The academics advise on how to do trials that use a problem your drug causes to hide a problem your drug causes.  The lawyers advise on the trials or studies that need doing in order for you to be able to defend the product in academic and legal settings.

All are involved years, perhaps a decade, before any sign of a legal action or public fuss.  You are able to brief them on the likely legal actions or publicity you could face because the right hand already knows what problems your drug causes, even though the left hand never concedes anything – even after the drug has been removed from the market.  It would be irresponsible to your shareholders not to have defences like this in place.

Click to read on to see the whole superb Healy article and you will not be disappointed:

Sense about Science: First Admit no Harm June 9, 2014

And irony of ironies, here is Dr Ben Goldacre getting you all to give money to Sense About Science – raising funds so Sense About Science can run Ben Goldacre’s AllTrials campaign which is being so successful getting laws proposed to apply throughout the European Union which will ensure drug safety takes 101st place well behind drug industry profits in 1st. 

Ben Goldacre is fundraising for Sense About Science

Quite a coup for Dr Ben Goldacre.  Well done Doc. 

Your parents should be proud of their self-admitted “nerd” son:

Nerds at the parliamentary committee on the Draft Defamation Bill June 14th, 2011 by Ben Goldacre