Autorentext

Peter C. Gøtzsche is professor emeritus, physician, and a bestselling author. His scientific works have been cited over 190,000 times. He is the only Dane who has published over one hundred papers in “the big five” journals (BMJ, Lancet, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, and New England Journal of Medicine). He has also appeared on The Daily Show. He currently works as a researcher, lecturer, author, independent consultant, expert witness in lawsuits, and produces films and interviews, in collaboration with Danish award-winning filmmaker and historian Janus Bang.

Klappentext

This is a story of scientific misconduct, committed by Merck, the fourth biggest drug company in the world. Merck has committed scientific misconduct before, and the author describes the fraud related to Merck’s arthritis drug, Vioxx, which killed tens of thousands of patients because Merck concealed that it causes heart attacks. 

In his role as an expert witness in a lawsuit against Merck, Dr. Peter C. Gøtzsche read 112,452 pages of confidential study reports about Merck’s HPV vaccine Gardasil, corresponding to 500 medium-sized books, and wrote an expert report of 350 pages with four appendices. Dr. Gøtzsche reveals that Merck used numerous tactics to avoid reporting serious neurological harms of Gardasil, including Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) and Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), which, in his view, in some cases constituted outright fraud. 

How Merck and Drug Regulators Hid Serious Harms of the HPV Vaccines details how the drug agencies were complicit in scientific misconduct and gives many examples that other authorities also provided seriously misleading information about the benefits and harms of the HPV vaccines. 

Dr. Gøtzsche gives a rare insight into the behavior of drug company lawyers when a company comes under attack for having concealed serious harms of its drug. He describes how he was harassed by Merck’s lawyer who tried to impugn his character and scientific credibility in ways, which included setting up traps for him during his deposition. If anyone was in doubt whether Merck and our authorities can be trusted, this book gives the answer.