Howard Richman, former VP of Biopure, impersonated a doctor and lied about having colon cancer in order to trick a judge into thinking he was suffering and dying.
This bizarre deceit was an effort by Richman to squirm out of an SEC lawsuit that accused Richman of misleading investors. According to the Associated Press, Richman misled investors about the potential for FDA approval of a blood replacement product called Hemopure, which is made from cow's blood. By faking his own cancer and forging a doctor's note, Richman was able to get a postponement of judgment in the SEC lawsuit, which effectively ended the legal action he would have otherwise faced.
naturalnews.com
What is Biopure?
Biopure Corporation develops, manufactures and markets oxygen therapeutics, a new class of pharmaceuticals that are administered intravenously to increase oxygen transport to the body's tissues.
~snip~
We have been developing Hemopure for the treatment of patients with cardiovascular ischemia and supporting the U.S. Navy's government-funded development of the product for out-of-hospital treatment of trauma patients in hemorrhagic shock. To exploit the body of preclinical and clinical information we have involving anemia, we are now beginning development for use of Hemopure in anemic cancer patients and end-of-life patients.
Biopure - from their company page
Ripping off the armed services and sick people is as low as it gets. During a period of time when so many are losing their jobs, homes, medical coverage and retirement only makes it worse.
Howard Richman, a former vice president at Biopure, admitted he had instructed his lawyers to tell a judge he was gravely ill with colon cancer. He also admitted to posing as his doctor in a phone call with his lawyer so that she would tell the judge that his cancer had spread and that he was undergoing chemotherapy.
~snip~
The SEC complaint accused Biopure, Richman and three other executives of misleading investors over the prospects of winning approval for a synthetic blood product called Hemopure.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had rejected clinical trials because of safety concerns about Hemopure, a blood substitute made from cow hemoglobin.
Associated Press
Lying about terminal cancer in order to stonewall an FDA rejection of clinical trials that proves your drug doesn't work is just as bad as lying about the clinical trials themselves, which takes us to . . .
Doctors who lie about the clinical trials of drugs they test.
Fake clinical trial data for Celebrex and Vioxx
. . . . . a researcher at Baystate Medical Centerin Massachusetts, Dr. Scott Reuben, was found to have faked the data used in 21 "scientific" papers published in peer-reviewed medical journals from 1996 - 2008.
~snip~
. . . . . the damage has already been done: Dr. Reuben's work was reportedly relied on very heavily by p(i)ll-pushing doctors and medication advocates, who cited his studies to "prove" these drugs are safe and effective. In reality, though, it was all just made up!
naturalnews.com
Parenthesis and bold facing added by the diarist
As of now, "Doctor" Scott Reuben still gets good ratings with healthgrades.com and other medical research sources. It should be easy to get high ratings when you can pull your credentials out of your ass.
Isn't this the same kind of shit John Stewart is beating up CNBC for? You know, kinda pretending all is clear on the western front when in reality you are helping the bandits make off with the goods kinda stuff. Only in this case, it isn't the super-rich who are suffering too, it is predominantly the poor and the sick.
The Statue of Liberty is getting pissed. Give me your tired and your poor. Save your bullshit for someone else.
I guess it's hard to get an objective view on your corporation's new clinical trial for it's favorite new wonder placebo drug when the guy administering it is getting paid by the big corporation funding the trial. Kinda takes the spirit out of the whole thing. It is like me paying my teacher based on whether or not I like the grade they are going to give me. Funny thing is, when it works like that, guess which kind of grade I am going to get every time.
A+
This has been the modus operandi of Big Pharma, the AMA, the FDA, the insurance companies and many other complicit parties. These people would rob your grave if it weren't easier to do it while you are still alive The question of whether it heals you/kills you always takes a back seat to whether it is profitable/good for business.
I want to see that change.
Hemopure is currently in trials in Europe and South Africa, and our soldiers are having it tried on them, apparently. This is all according to their own website.
Where the management of Biopure lies about cancer. To judges.
Back to the quack doctor Rueben,
The hospital has asked the medical journals to retract the 21 studies, some of which reported favorable results from the use of painkillers like Pfizer Inc.'s Bextra and Merck & Co.'s Vioxx -- both since withdrawn -- as well as Pfizer's Celebrex and Lyrica. Dr. Reuben's research work also claimed positive findings for Wyeth's antidepressant Effexor XR as a pain killer. And he wrote to the Food and Drug Administration, urging the agency not to restrict the use of many of the painkillers he studied, citing his own data on their safety and effectiveness.
"Dr. Reuben deeply regrets that this happened," said the doctor's attorney, Ingrid Martin. "Dr. Reuben cooperated fully with the peer review committee. There were extenuating circumstances that the committee fairly and justly considered." She declined to explain the extenuating circumstances. Dr. Reuben didn't respond to requests for comment sent through Ms. Martin and left at his former office.
Wall St. Jounal.com
Deeply regretted does not make up for putting unsafe medications on the market, or lying to the medical community.
Pfizer gave Quack Reuben five research grants between 2002 and 2007. He also was employed as a member of the company's speakers bureau, giving infomercials gussied up as "talks" about Pfizer drugs to colleagues. As far as I see it he was a paid consultant.
Now for the shocker.
Pfizer Inc.'s Bextra, Celebrex and Lyrica and Merck & Co. Inc.'s Vioxx, as well as Wyeth's antidepressant Effexor were all products listed in Quack Rueben's previous and now discredited studies.
Here's the best part . . .
The retracted studies aren't expected to affect the drugs' regulatory status because Dr. Reuben's studies weren't part of the packages that manufacturers submitted to the FDA or European authorities.
Oh. Well, that makes things better then. If they submitted to the FDA or the European Authorities the fact he was making shit up as he went along there would have been a big problem, or so I would imagine.
Why do I get the feeling these are not isolated incidents?
The whole system is corrupt and broken, from the pharmaceutical companies, to the financiers to the insurance companies, all of it. Way too much cherry-picking goes on in these trial studies, and if the executives of these companies are not lying to the FDA it is because the FDA has been blind for the last 8 years. Hopefully that is going to change. It does not resolve the fact that these corporations are lying to their investors, their customers and to the public about the safety and effectiveness of the "medications" they are selling us.
A healthy nation has a future, a nation on medication is a society in decline.
What happened to natural cures, or other types of traditional remedies? Since when did everything have to be a drug, approved by the FDA and sold by a Big Pharma manufacturer? If it worked since ancient Greece why can't it work now? I'd sooner take cod-liver oil than Vioxx. Who do I trust when the experts are on the take?
IMHO, the whole health care system is not based around preventing illness, but in medicating sick people. We do not have health care, we have sick care, and it is not working. People aren't getting the help they need because profit is getting in the way, but they are getting the bill at the end of the doctor's visit, and that bill often does not lead to a healthy file in your doctor's folder, but filing for bankruptcy.
My suggestion? As a fellow Kossack stated the other day:
If the shoe fits, throw it!
Fortunately for the economy, the snake oil industry is alive and well, and thriving like never before.
Thank you, and good luck to you and yours,
MoT
Bail Out The People! a grassroots movement