Tamiflu anti-viral drug revealed as complete hoax; Roche studies based on scientific fraud

Monday, December 14, 2009 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: Tamiflu, Roche, health news

(NaturalNews) When it comes to selling chemicals that claim to treat H1N1 swine flu, the pharmaceutical industry's options are limited to two: Vaccines and anti-virals. The most popular anti-viral, by far, is Tamiflu, a drug that's actually derived from a Traditional Chinese Medicine herb called star anise.

But Tamiflu is no herb. It's a potentially fatal concentration of isolated chemical components that have essentially been bio-pirated from Chinese medicine. And when you isolate and concentrate specific chemicals in these herbs, you lose the value (and safety) of full-spectrum herbal medicine.

That didn't stop Tamiflu's maker, Roche, from trying to find a multi-billion-dollar market for its drug. In order to tap into that market, however, Roche needed to drum up some evidence that Tamiflu was both safe and effective.

Roche engages in science fraud

Roche claims there are ten studies providing Tamiflu is both safe and effective. According to the company, Tamiflu has all sorts of benefits, including a 61% reduction in hospital admissions by people who catch the flu and then get put on Tamiflu.

The problem with these claims is that they aren't true. They were simply invented by Roche.

A groundbreaking article recently published in the British Medical Journal accuses Roche of misleading governments and physicians over the benefits of Tamiflu. Out of the ten studies cited by Roche, it turns out, only two were ever published in science journals. And where is the original data from those two studies? Lost.

The data has disappeared. Files were discarded. The researcher of one study says he never even saw the data. Roche took care of all that, he explains.

So the Cochrane Collaboration, tasked with reviewing the data behind Tamiflu, decided to investigate. After repeated requests to Roche for the original study data, they remained stonewalled. The only complete data set they received was from an unpublished study of 1,447 adults which showed that Tamiflu was no better than placebo. Data from the studies that claimed Tamiflu was effective was apparently lost forever.

As The Atlantic reports, that's when former employees of Adis International (essentially a Big Pharma P.R. company) shocked the medical world by announcing they had been hired to ghost-write the studies for Roche.

It gets even better: These researchers were told what to write by Roche!

As one of these ghostwriters told the British Medical Journal:

"The Tamiflu accounts had a list of key messages that you had to get in. It was run by the [Roche] marketing department and you were answerable to them. In the introduction ...I had to say what a big problem influenza is. I'd also have to come to the conclusion that Tamiflu was the answer."

In other words, the Roche marketing department ran the science and told researchers what conclusions to draw from the clinical trials. Researchers hired to conduct the science were controlled by the marketing puppeteers. No matter what they found in the science, they had already been directed to reach to conclusion that "Tamiflu was the answer."

Now, I don't know about you, but where I come from, we call this "science fraud." And as numerous NaturalNews investigations have revealed, this appears to be the status quo in the pharmaceutical industry.

Virtually none of the "science" conducted by drug companies can be trusted at all because it really isn't science in the first place. It's just propaganda being dressed up to look like science.

Sadly, even the CDC has been fooled by this clinical trial con. As stated by author Shannon Brownlee in The Atlantic:

"...the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appears to be operating in some alternative universe, where valid science no longer matters to public policy. The agency's flu recommendations are in lockstep with Roche's claims that the drug can be life-saving -- despite the FDA's findings and despite the lack of studies to prove such a claim. What's more, neither the CDC nor the FDA has demanded the types of scientific studies that could definitively determine whether or not the company's claims are true: that Tamiflu reduces the risk of serious complications and saves lives. Nancy Cox, who heads the CDC's flu program, told us earlier this year she opposes a placebo-controlled study (in which one half of patients would be given Tamiflu and the other half would be given placebo), because the drug's benefits are already proven."

Did you catch that last line? The CDC isn't interested in testing Tamiflu because "the drug's benefits are already proven." Except they aren't. But this is how the pharmaceutical industry operates:

Step 1) Fabricate evidence that your drug works.
Step 2) Use that fraudulent evidence to get your drug approved.
Step 3) Use fear to create consumer demand for your drug (and encourage governments to stockpile it).
Step 4) Avoid any actual scientific testing by claiming the drug has already been proven to work (and cite your original fraudulent studies to back you up).

This is the recipe the CDC is following right now with Tamiflu. It's a recipe of scientific stupidity and circular logic, of course, but that seems to be strangely common in the medical community these days.

Even the FDA says Tamiflu doesn't work

The FDA, remarkably, hasn't entirely given in to the Tamiflu hoax. They required Roche to print the following disclaimer on Tamiflu lables -- a disclaimer that openly admits the drug has never been proven to work:

"Tamiflu has not been proven to have a positive impact on the potential consequences (such as hospitalizations, mortality, or economic impact) of seasonal, avian, or pandemic influenza."

Even further, an FDA spokesperson told the British Medical Journal, "The clinical trials... failed to demonstrate any significant difference in rates of hospitalization, complications, or mortality in patients receiving either Tamiflu or placebo."

It's the same message over and over again, like a broken record: Tamiflu doesn't work. And the "science" that says Tamiflu does work was all apparently fabricated from the start.

The Tamiflu stockpiling scandal

Junk science, though, is good enough for the U.S. government. Based on little more than fabricated evidence and Big Pharma propaganda, the U.S. government has spent $1.5 billion stockpiling Tamiflu. This turned out to be a great deal for Roche, but a poor investment for U.S. citizens who ended up spending huge dollars for a medicine that doesn't work.

As is stated in the Atlantic:

"Governments, public health agencies, and international bodies such as the World Health Organization, have all based their decisions to recommend and stockpile Tamiflu on studies that had seemed independent, but had in fact been funded by the company and were authored almost entirely by Roche employees or paid academic consultants."

Even if Tamiflu did work, there are Tamiflu-resistant strains of H1N1 are now circulating (http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpre...).

The upshot of all this is that governments around the world are flushing billions of dollars down the drain stockpiling a drug that doesn't work -- a drug promoted via propaganda and scientific fraud.

This isn't the first time your government has wasted taxpayer dollars, of course (it seems to be what the U.S. government does best), but this example is especially concerning given that this was all done with the excuse that natural remedies are useless and only vaccines and Tamiflu can protect you from a viral pandemic.

But as it turns out, vaccines and Tamiflu are useless and only natural remedies really work. That's why so many informed people around the world have been stocking up on vitamin D, garlic, anti-viral tinctures and superfoods to protect themselves from a potential pandemic that most world governments remain clueless to prevent.

I find it fascinating that the governments of the world are stockpiling medicines that DON'T work, while the natural health people of the world are stockpiling natural remedies that DO work. If a real pandemic ever strikes our world, there's no question who the survivors will be (hint: it won't be the clueless chaps standing in line waiting for their Tamiflu pills...).

Which remedies really do work to boost immune function and protect the body from infectious disease? I've actually published a special report revealing my top five recommended remedies: https://www.naturalnews.com/Report_Anti-Viral...

In addition to the remedies mentioned in that report, I also recommend high-dose vitamin D as well as the Viral Defense product from www.PlantCures.com

I have no financial ties to any of the companies whose products are recommended here, by the way. Unlike the pharmaceutical industry, I don't operate purely for profit. My job is to get valuable information out to the People -- information that can help save lives and reduce suffering. This is the job the FDA and CDC should be doing but have long since abandoned in their betrayal of the American people.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912u/tamif...
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/339/dec0...
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/339/dec1...