MHRA FAIL YET AGAIN

Please find below correspondence to which I was copied into by Dr Aubrey Blumsohn.

I was copied in on the email and in the spirit of openness I am reproducing it without permission and will be interested to receive a reply

Dr Blumsohn is apparently one of the brave few doctors who seems to care about honesty. There is some information about scientific fraud and ghostwriting about the drug Actonel (Procter and Gamble Pharmaceuticals) and the story of what happened to him seems unbelievable. It involved ghostwriting of science in Dr Blumsohn's name. The reported study findings subsequently seemed to be fraudulent. Having received no help from the MHRA, the Research Dean of his Medical School, Sheffield University and after a journal editor attempted to suppress the information (follow the money) he went to the press and was fired.
For more information on Dr Aubrey Blumsohn and what happened to him - click on the following links

http://www.slate.com/id/2133061/
http://www.thejabberwock.org/jbmrs.htm
http://www.whistleblower.org/content/press_detail.cfm?press_id=507
http://www.whistleblower.org/content/press_detail.cfm?press_id=387


Dr Blumsohn's letter follows



28th June 2006


Ms Susan KramerLiberal Democrat MP for Richmond Park

Steve Webb MPLiberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary

Dear Ms Kramer/Mr Webb

I was sent correspondence from yourself and Steve Webb about the MHRA from constituents concerned about scientific fraud in studies of SSRI antidepressants. I am a medical doctor and have some personal experience of this duplicitous agency involving other drugs. I don't believe you understand the gravity or nature of the problem.

You state that "While this is being examined, I have signed EDM 100 (Prescription Medication), which calls for FULL AND IMPARTIAL INFORMATION for consumers on the potential risks and side-effects of prescription medication. "

With respect, the problem is not one of providing consumers with "full and impartial information", rather that there is no longer any "impartial information" to provide. Doctors, researchers, and authors fronting scientific papers about pharmaceuticals are also being denied information about the drugs they are prescribing, and manipulated "scientific" material is being written by companies as if it derived from University academics (such as myself). The regulators are seemingly accepting the information fed to them by companies with blind faith - with demonstrably catastrophic results.

Your Colleague Steve Webb stated

"I have looked at EDM 2172 and will not at this stage be recommending that my colleagues sign it. Clearly to accuse the MHRA of a cover-up needs to have pretty solid evidence that this is the case. As you have been taking up this issue through my colleague Susan Kramer, I would suggest that you ask her to write to the MHRA on the issue and give them the right of reply."

This is not a matter of fine politics or "rights of reply" - at least 50,000 patients are estimated to have died in the US alone as a result of cover-ups and scientific fraud involving VIOXX. Scientific fraud involving SSRI's has almost certainly resulted in deaths and much suffering.
The evidence suggesting cover-up and conflicts of interest is extensive. The MHRA have already been given adequate opportunity to reply, but have failed to do so in anything other than a laughable manner. I have no personal interest in the SSRI issue, but the failures of reply with regard to this are already carefully documented by social policy experts for example
at http://www.socialaudit.org.uk/6040000.htm#New

Instead of perpetuating this infinite loop of gobbledegook and delay it would be better if you simply assessed the evidence and failure of answering and attempted to get answers yourself.
Astonishingly, the department of health seems now to be asserting (correspondence as of last week) that the MHRA does not in fact have any legal remit to investigate scientific fraud or ghostwriting by companies in studies involving pharmaceuticals, or in the use of such science in promotional material.

The whole structure of science in pharmaceutical medicine has failed, and the MHRA is certainly implicated in and has colluded with this failure.

If you would like to meet with me to discuss my own rather interesting involvement with this agency I would be most pleased.

Kindly

Dr Aubrey Blumsohn MBBCh, PhD, MSc, BSc(hons), MRCPath