'Drug trials are pointless ... and unethical'

[Guest guest]

Dying medicine boss: 'Drug trials are pointless ... and unethical'

 

 

 

 

Exclusive: Volunteers stand little chance of recovery

Treatments kept from public

Companies scupper rivals

By Sarah-Kate Templeton, Health Editor

 

 

 

For the past 40 years Professor David Horrobin has been developing new

medicines. In 1977 he founded Scotia Holdings, which was once one of

Scotland's most promising biotechnology firms. But today, as the drug

company boss is dying of cancer, he has decided to expose the unethical

experiments that his industry carries out on patients.

Horrobin reveals that patients recruited to clinical trials are prescribed

highly toxic drugs with serious side effects, while they stand little chance

of benefiting personally. He says that only around one in 30 patients on

trials will respond positively to treatment, but that participants are not

informed of this slim hope.

 

Horrobin, who is currently chairman of Stirling-based firm Laxdale Ltd,

which develops new psychiatric drugs, claims that pharmaceutical companies

even deliberately recruit more patients than they need for trials so that

there are too few sufferers left for competitors to test rival drugs.

 

He also reveals that promising cancer treatments are not available to

patients because, unless they are a completely new compound and qualify for

a patent which will secure profit from their sale, no company will pay for

them to go through the lengthy trial process.

 

Two years ago Horrobin was diagnosed with lymphoma, cancer of the lymph

tissue. As the cancer was at an advanced stage, he was told that he could

not realistically expect to live more than six months.

 

In a paper in the Lancet medical journal, which was fast-tracked for urgent

pub lication, he writes: 'I entered a universe parallel to the one in which

I had lived for 40 years. I became a patient and suddenly saw everything

from the other side. I discovered a whole new attitude to clinical trials

and experimental treatments.

 

'I believe that patients who are asked to volunteer for large trials in

cancer or other lethal diseases are being misled. Most such trials cannot be

justified on ethical grounds.'

 

He points out that large trials are needed to show up a small improvement on

present treatments.

 

'If a trial has to be large

 

Continued at http://www.sundayherald.com/31817-----------

 

---------- I agree! Lorenzo