Hoax as defined by Merriam-Webster’s dictionary:
: to trick into believing or accepting as genuine something false and often preposterous
According to a recent article, Tamiflu doesn’t prevent the flu, nor does it cure the flu once someone has it. The notion that Tamiflu has any efficacy in fighting the flu is actually the result of a well orchestrated hoax, relying on faulty science and marketing schemes, it says. This sounds familiar. The “Anthropocentric-Global-Warming-Climate-Change-Greenhouse-Gas-Effect” hoax comes to mind as well. So does the Darwinian notion of an “Undirected-Evolution-Of-A-Molecule-To-Man” hoax. The fraudulent science on all fronts, just to promote a particular fancy, is really alarming. Remember Ida and Ardi and the Piltdown Man and Haeckel’s embryos?
Tamiflu’s maker, 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 The only complete data set they received was from an unpublished study of 1,447 adults which showed that Tamiflu was no better than placebo.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.
Lost, like the raw data that was lost by the East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. The parallels are uncanny. It seems that the business of science has become a science of business. If the data and evidence isn’t saying what you want it to say when you want it to say it, just say it anyway, and sell the product to the masses.