Fraudulent Cancer Treatment Pushed by Major University

Even when faced with proof that their system of treatment was based on severely corrupted data, Duke University continued to sell their treatment system.

by Heidi Stevenson

8 July 2011

Cancer patients turned to Duke University's tumor profiling team for cancer treatment based on claims that they could provide the best possible treatment using their specialized super-duper bioprofiling system. They even had a series of high-profile papers published in major journals to back up their claims. It was nothing but smoke 'n' mirrors.

The New York Times tells the story of Juliet Jacobs, a woman who learned she had lung cancer, so went out to get a second opinion, and then a third, and finally discovered Duke's program last year. She believed what they told her—that they could genetically profile her tumor, identify its weaknesses, and give her drugs that would target those weaknesses. The profiling was worthless. She's dead today.

The Fraud

It might be possible to believe that Duke's program was an honest mistake. But, in light of the fact that the statistics used were shown by mathematicians to be complete nonsense—and the researchers had been confronted with this information!—that just isn't possible.

M.D. Anderson Cancer Center's mathematicians, Keith Baggerly and Kevin Coombes, had been asked to check the work of Duke's researchers. In nearly no time, they found problems. Like moving a row or column over in a spreadsheet, and, according to the Times, other mistakes that were "inexplicable".

These errors were brought to the Duke researchers' attention, and they tossed them off as simply "clerical errors"! Imagine, people's lives are at stake, and those lives are put at risk by "clerical errors". But, it gets worse.

The researchers didn't even slow down. They continued to publish—based on the same flawed data. The publishers include The New England Journal of Medicine and Nature Medicine, considered two of the most prestigious. And Duke continued to make their phony claims, pulling in more and more patients who hoped to be saved.

You'd think, of course, that when Drs. Baggerly and Coombes spoke out about the Duke situation, it might have stopped. But that didn't happen. In spite of publishing their results in The Annals of Applied Statistics, nothing happened. Duke continued to bring in people suffering from cancer with the hope of being cured through the new, wonderful tumor genetic typing.

The Bust

Finally, the lead "researcher", Dr. Anil Potti, was exposed in The Cancer Letter, a trade publication, for falsifying his résumé. Among other things, he claimed to have been a Rhodes Scholar. This fraud finally resulted in Duke stopping the pseudo-research and the patient trials.

But why wasn't the fraudulence of the entire basis for the trials enough to call a halt to the trials?

One might try to excuse all this on the claim that the patients didn't pay. Aside from the fact that it is no excuse for using them in this way, the fact is that they were lied to. And profits were made. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were received in grants for single trials by Duke and the researchers. They were making money hand over fist. Their fraud was very profitable.

Did anyone who might have lived die as a result of the fraud? We'll likely never know. We do know that no one was saved, and that many have experienced extra risks because of the callous indifference to the plight of the patients. They, obviously, were considered of no real value, beyond their use as résumé stuffers and money makers.

Even now, Duke University's Duke Health website proclaims:

At the Duke Cancer Institute, we combine cutting-edge research with compassionate care. We treat more than our patients' cancers -- we care for the patient as a whole person.

It's a lie. Neither is their research cutting-edge, but they obviously don't care for either the whole person who's relegated to patient status, nor do they care for the cancer-riddled parts. Duke's callous disregard for the welfare of patients demonstrates their status as master players in the cancer industry—a most profitable endeavor. At least, for those without a conscience.

*****************************************************************************

What do you think? Click here to comment!

*****************************************************************************

Search Gaia Health: