Gøtzsche Creates The Institute For Scientific Freedom
The Danish scientist expelled from the Cochrane Collaboration promotes a new scientific organization independent of the interests of pharmaceutical companies.
Peter C. Gøtzsche was one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration 25 years ago, a non-profit entity – at that time – whose objective has been to carry out and review medical studies to promote medicine based on scientific evidence.
In September 2018, the Cochrane Collaboration expelled Gøtzsche for having questioned the impartiality of a review on the safety of the human papillomavirus.
Gøtzsche claimed that the study authors had underestimated the existing evidence on the risks of this vaccine, and that they had done so because of the growing influence of the pharmaceutical industry on the organization.
A month later, Gøtzsche was removed from his post at Rigshospitalet, Denmark’s national hospital, for “loss of confidence” in the leadership. Currently this dismissal is in the hands of the Danish justice. For now, he retains his chair of Clinical Research Design and Analysis at the University of Copenhagen.
Gøtzsche tries to safeguard scientific independence from pharmaceutical companies
But Gøtzsche has not stood still, he has not been defeated. He has announced the founding of the Institute for Scientific Freedom, an independent alternative to the Cochrane Collaboration. And it has launched a crowdfunding to launch it in the month of March.
The Danish scientist explains that he tried to defend against free scientific debate, the absence of conflicts of interest, transparency, democracy and cooperation in Cochrane, but that he was expelled by a direction more interested in the march and the business.
“Scientific freedom, honesty and integrity are constantly under attack, especially in the field of health, which is dominated by the pharmaceutical industry and other economic interests,” says Gøtzsche, author of the book Medicines that kill and organized crime (published by Los Libros del Lince). That is why it is vital that there is a truly independent organization like the one you have decided to create.
Medications are the third leading cause of death
In the presentation of the crowdfunding it is recalled that Professor Gøtzsche has denounced that the prescription of drugs is the third cause of death in rich countries, behind heart disease and cancer, and also that many psychiatric drugs do more harm than good . And citizens around the world are asked to donate so that independent medical research can continue.
People interested in financing the Gøtzsche project can do so through the web www.gofundme.com/scientific-freedom
