AIDS scientist sentenced to prison for vaccine research fraud - Merck fraudsters remain unpunished

(NaturalNews) A scientist from Iowa State University who admitted to lying about the efficacy of a vaccine he helped develop for the AIDS virus has been sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison, according to new reports. Dong-Pyou Han, 58, recently confessed to altering blood samples to make it seem as though he'd made a huge discovery on the AIDS front, only to be later outed for flagrant scientific fraud.

Besides his prison term, Han will also be forced to pay $7.2 million in fines to the federal government after entering a plea agreement back in February, in which he admitted to two counts of making false statements. Han's involvement in fraudulent AIDS research began as far back as 2008 when he worked alongside a team at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

According to CBS Cleveland, Han worked under professor Michael Cho at the time, who had been awarded funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop an experimental HIV vaccine. When tests on rabbits failed to show an antibody response, however, Cho and Han decided to spike the rabbit blood samples they were using with human blood to make it appear as though the vaccine worked when it actually didn't.

But this critical information didn't come out until years later, long after Iowa State decided to recruit Cho and his team to continue their work there. The university was under the false impression that Cho et al. had made a "groundbreaking" discovery in the area of AIDS research, when it turns out they had actually committed scientific fraud.

Here's what Han had to say in his earlier confession:

"I was foolish, coward [sic] and not frank. My misconduct [was] not done in order to hurt someone," Han stated, adding that what he participated in constituted "foolishness," and that it was his "[fault] and responsibility."

Merck scientists committed the same type of fraud with MMR vaccines; why aren't they going to jail?

Prison time is a rare occurrence in these types of cases, according to The Washington Post, and we would have to agree – it isn't often that a conventional researcher or scientist involved in fraudulent vaccine or drug research is held accountable for gross misconduct. Just look at what Merck & Co. has gotten away with concerning the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella.

As we reported back in February, two former Merck scientists who filed a False Claims Act against the company back in 2010 had came forward with evidence showing that Merck tampered with study data and ultimately lied about the safety of the MMR vaccine. Like Han and his colleagues, Merck scientists tampered with blood samples in order to artificially induce a fake antibody response, all in order to create the illusion that MMR is safe and effective.

Here's what the False Claims Act complaint reads, as reported by Mike Adams:

"Merck... added animal antibodies to blood samples to achieve more favorable test results, though it knew that the human immune system would never produce such antibodies, and that the antibodies created a laboratory testing scenario that 'did not in any way correspond to, correlate with, or represent real life... virus neutralization in vaccinated people.'"

This sounds strikingly similar to what Han and his boss Cho did while at Iowa State, and yet it doesn't appear that any Merck executives or scientists are headed to jail anytime soon. This double standard of taking down the little guy while letting the big dogs continue to foist dangerous vaccines like MMR on the public is the bigger crime here that deserves honest justice.

Sources:

http://cleveland.cbslocal.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.courthousenews.com

http://www.naturalnews.com