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Millions of surgery patients at risk in drug research fraud

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  • Millions of surgery patients at risk in drug research fraud

    The scientific scandal du jour:

    "Joachim Boldt is at the centre of a criminal investigation amid allegations that he may have forged up to 90 crucial studies on the treatment. He has been stripped of his professorship and sacked from a German hospital following allegations about his research into drugs known as colloids.

    Experts described Mr Boldt's alleged forgeries as possibly the biggest medical research scandal since Andrew Wakefield was struck off last year for falsely claiming to have proved a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

    Guidelines for British anaesthetists regarding colloids – used to boost blood volume in patients undergoing surgery – are being revised after it emerged that four of the key studies on which they were based are to be formally retracted.

    Mr Boldt, 57, was regarded as a leading specialist in intravenous fluid management, and his work was published widely in British medical journals.

    He claimed to have proved that colloids were as safe as other, similar treatments despite earlier studies showing them to be more dangerous. Mr Boldt's alleged forgeries date back up to a decade.
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    As chief anaesthetist at Ludwigshafen Hospital in the Rhineland, Mr Boldt was the leading advocate of colloids, which are now commonly used across Europe.

    He published dozens of papers "proving" their benefits and contradicting studies which suggested they could increase the risk of death in surgery and cause kidney failure, severe blood loss and heart failure.

    German medical authorities are scrutinising 92 of his key publications and a criminal investigation is under way into allegations that he forged documents, tested drugs on patients without their consent and fraudulently claimed payments for operations he had never performed.

    Mr Boldt received funding from manufacturers of hydroxyethyl starch (HES) – the colloid he most strongly advocated – including B. Braun, Baxter and Fresenius Kabi.

    He was frequently paid to speak at international medical conferences where he hailed HES as "the holy grail" of fluid drugs.

    HES and other colloids are up to 10 times more expensive than the alternative fluid management drugs, crystalloids, which some experts believe are safer as they contain smaller molecules and are more easily absorbed. Mr Boldt was sacked from Ludwigshafen Hospital last November. It has established an investigating commission to review 29 of the 92 papers which have been identified as "highly suspected" of containing forged or distorted data. The others will be examined if serious evidence of forgery is found. "


    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/83...d-scandal.html

  • #2
    Horrible and revolting. I'd say it's potentially worse than the Wakefield vaccine stuff.

    Dr Rupert Pearse, a senior lecturer in intensive care medicine at Barts and the London School of Medicine, and co-author of the British guidelines on fluid drugs, said last night: “I specifically remember looking at a paper of his last year and being surprised at how lucky he had been with his results.

    For me, it shakes the world I work in and makes me feel less confident in it, and if I were a member of the public I would feel the same.”
    Agreed.

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