Madison Area Lyme Support Group

Article Excerpts:

The Cochrane Collaboration is a grassroots organisation founded in 1993. It publishes systematic reviews of healthcare interventions and was highly successful until British journalist Mark Wilson became CEO in 2012. A major medical journal expressed concern that someone with no health care experience was leading one of the foremost organisations dedicated to ensuring good clinical decisions.¹ Wilson made the organisation highly ineffective and bureaucratic, and his actions harmed Cochrane’s mission about ensuring high scientific standards.^2-4

The problems mounted, and in April 2021, Wilson suddenly left his job, a week before Cochrane’s largest funder, the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) in the UK, announced a major budget cut.⁵ The funder criticised the poor scientific quality of Cochrane reviews, “a point raised by people in the Collaboration to ensure that garbage does not go into the reviews; otherwise, your reviews will be garbage.”² Only four months later, the NIHR declared that the funding would stop in March 2023. When that happened, Cochrane was in big disarray, but the huge bureaucracy and the poor scientific standard continued nonetheless.²

I shall discuss 11 cases that stem from my personal experiences and those of Tom Jefferson, one of my previous employees, starting in 2015 when Soares-Weiser became Deputy Editor-in-Chief and got a substantial say about the standard of Cochrane reviews (she became Editor-in-Chief in 2019).¹² But first, I shall describe a stunning affair in 2013. (See link for article)

_____________

**Comment**

I highly recommend listening to Gøtzsche’s Survival of a Whistleblower to understand what is at stake for speaking out about industry corruption and conflicts of interest.  Gøtzsche certainly has paid the price as have many others throughout history.  We are indebted to those who uphold ethics in a time when it’s always easier to follow the crowd.

As a founding member, Gøtzsche was expelled from the Cochrane group he helped create. Four board members promptly resigned in protest.  He states that within the group, academic freedom has gone, scientific debates are unwelcome, and transparency is a thing of the past. 

The reason for the expulsion?

He challenged the leadership on core issues and on the way it was managing the charity.

Proving without a shadow of doubt: it is verboten to question anything about ‘vaccines.’

Gøtzsche is widely known for his fierce attacks on Big Pharma and his criticism of medical interventions he deems useless or harmful. He wrote a controversial book about what he says is the overuse of mammography in breast cancer screening, and in another book likened Pharma to “organized crime.”

This man steps on ALL the toes of the beast.

In short, he states that if Cochrane can not find an ethical CEO, it illustrates how far the organization has sunk morally and scientifically.

“In science, there can be no compromises when these loyalties clash, even if members of the club may feel you don’t respect them or their authority.” ~ Dr. Peter Gøtzsche