David Gorski’s Cancelled Drug Trial Tainted By Institutional Conflict of Interest
SEPTEMBER 1, 2016 http://www.autisminvestigated.com
Wayne State University oncology professor and “Science”Blogger David Gorski is a hypocritical and crooked “doctor” who should be fired, de-licensed and not allowed anywhere near patients. He should also be investigated for his social media role in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s cover up of vaccine injury, a topic he squirms over when questioned about his lies publicly. And now, it is clear he had a conflict of interest in human subjects research at his university according to academic policy despite his denials.
Unfortunately, he has yet to get what he deserves as he continues to misrepresent his conflict of interest with Sanofi and the pharmaceutical industry while both smearing the parents of severely disabled children who were never the same again following vaccination and lying for the federal government that covers up that harm. Just recently, he spoke on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe – a podcast hosted by front group advisor Steven Novella – apparently upset at some recent critical coverage Gorski has been getting fromNaturalNews. In the podcast, he complained of having talks with his supervisor at his job as a result of the NaturalNews reports.
Among the unflattering facts NaturalNews cited about Gorski is the six year old discovery by Autism Investigated’s editor that he has been conducting a since-withdrawn trial of Sanofi drug Riluzole, sponsored by his employer that was in a partnership with Sanofi. The finding led to a letter-writing campaign by concerned readers to Gorski’s employer informing them of the conflict, an event Gorski has complained about ever since. Yet despite his university apparently letting him off the hook and his repeat claims that he was not conflicted in any way, the Institutional Review Board policies of his employer say otherwise:
Institutional Conflict of Interest consist of two major types: (1) l Conflict of Interest involving University equity holdings or a royalty arrangement related to sponsored programs
The principal investigator Gorski is a professor at Wayne State. The trial sponsor Barbara Anne Karmanos Cancer Institute is affiliated with Wayne State, which was partnered with Sanofi. Whereas before Gorski did not disclose this conflict in human subjects research, he now misrepresents it as not being a conflict on his bio at “ScienceBasedMedicine” – a blog he edits.
On the clinicaltrials.gov website, the following is stated about Gorski’s now-defunct trial: “This study has been withdrawn prior to enrollment. (Funding ended)”. According to the website, Gorski failed to enroll patients into his trial after two-and-a-half years of patient recruitment. Perhaps his reputation has something to do with it. A simple Google search of Gorski yields the following title on the first page: “David Gorski’s Financial Pharma Ties: What He Didn’t Tell You”. Any patient being recruited for Gorski’s trial who is curious about its principal investigator would no doubt see that headline and have concerns, and Gorski himself is undoubtedly aware of the potential for patients to find his blog.
The trial’s cancellation is remarkable in light of Gorski’s expressed hopes for it, suggesting Riluzole may prove to be as effective a treatment for breast cancer as surgery, radiation or chemo. That would certainly not be something a drug company would lack any interest in funding as Gorski had claimed about his research.
But even more remarkable is the hypocrisy as it relates to the ethical standards with which Gorski holds other doctors. He was a huge online cheerleader for the ruin of absolved British doctor Andrew Wakefield’s career, even though medical disciplinary findings against him that included conflict of interest and unethical research allegations were disproved.
Yet here we have Gorski not being up front about his own conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry in human subjects research on blogs that he knows could be written by the very patients he was trying to recruit for his Sanofi drug trial. Not only did he possess an undisclosed conflict of interest according to his own university’s IRB, but also according to the very medical disciplinary panel in the UK that yanked Dr. Wakefield’s license. Those guidelines make very clear that doctors should be up front to patients about potential conflicts of interest, including those of their employer. Gorski’s employer Wayne State was in a partnership with Sanofi that was probably worth millions while he was actively trying to recruit patients for his trial, yet nowhere was that mentioned on his public blog.
But these connections do not just conflict Gorski’s role in medicine and human subjects research, but also in medical education. On his academic bio, Gorski reveals that he encourages students to contribute to hisonline blog:
As the managing editor of Science-Based Medicine (SBM), a weblog devoted to discussing the science of medicine, Dr. Gorski is very interested in science communication and critical thinking, and interested students are welcome to publish in SBM under Dr. Gorski’s guidance to hone their writing skills for lay audiences.
Little would his students know that his since-cancelled drug trial was tainted by an institutional conflict of interest that connected his employer Wayne State to the drug company Sanofi, the maker of Riluzole that Gorski was recruiting patients to a breast cancer trial on. While being misled into thinking they are honing their writing skills, they are merely providing content free-of-charge to an agenda-driven, corporatist blog edited by a doctor who was not upfront about his conflicts on his blog.
By not including his connections on his blog and continuing to misrepresent them, he continually misleads both students and patients about his competing interests. It is hardly surprising that such a dishonest hypocrite would help expand the CDC’s vaccine-autism cover-up to social media.