Albert Einstein suggested in 1949 that the time would come when the rich so controlled the means of communication that it would be impossible for ordinary people to make informed decisions and so democracy would be broken. Considering the way in which patients have been affected in recent times, I feel that silence would not be responsible. There are no words to express how the decision making process involved has shaken the faith in institutions that healthcare professionals have been a bulwark in defending.
Chronic pain places a huge burden on millions of patients, families and carers around the world. However, the current model for treatment of pain is broken. The use of stronger analgesics to treat chronic pain has gained popularity since the 1990s following inappropriate adoption of the World Health Organization’s analgesic ladder, which was originally developed amid heavy marketing from US pharmaceutical companies around treatment for cancer-related pain. Chronic pain – defined as pain that has persisted for more than three months – is thought to affect around 28 million people in the UK, and according to the Royal College of General Practitioners, is a presenting condition in around 22% of primary care consultations.
Although most people living with back pain, headaches or anxiety-related pain can receive help using non-drug alternatives such as physiotherapy, occupational therapy, exercise, or holistic intervention, we are now faced with a situation where patients often expect to be prescribed drugs to treat chronic pain, assuming that because these may work in temporarily relieving short-term acute pain, they will experience a similar analgesic effect in the long-term. However this perception inevitably leads to disappointment because doctors have few options to prescribe, and limited time to spend with patients to adjust their expectations. Over time, patients end up with a long list of prescribed medicines, each to counteract the side effect of others, whilst the dosage of their prescribed analgesic is increased to maximum limits, and the pain still remains.
Furthermore, reckless marketing with intent to withholding material information regarding fatal and disabling side effects of a class of potent drugs called gabapentinoids (eg: gabapentin and pregabalin) has resulted in skyrocketing number of prescriptions. The unprecedented level of misinformation extends to outright falsification of clinical trial data from the outset for the drug pregabalin, which was brought to the market by Pfizer as an add-on anticonvulsant, only to be paraded as a safe alternative for treatment of anxiety and nerve-related pain. In order to clarify the role of the pharmaceutical industry in a simple summary, all that is needed to say is that we translate breakthrough research into medicines that improve and extend human life. Therefore, what is being described here is highly unusual. It is in the patients’ best interests to speak up about this.
Recorded evidence shows that at the height of the concerns with opioid dependence, Pfizer decided to bring pregabalin to the therapeutic market, whilst describing it as a safe alternative, without independent scientific evidence to back this up. The following comprises of pregabalin’s initial Marketing Authorization adverse effect profile:
Table – Reported Reaction vs Number of Cases
Abdominal distension – 1
Anxiety – 1
Abnormal coordination – 1
Breast pain – 1
Balance disorder – 1
Depressed mood – 1
Dizziness – 1
Lethargy – 1
Muscle spasm – 1
Nausea – 1
Speech disorder – 1
Weight gain – 1
Looking at the information above, no qualification in science is required to appreciate that the numbers and adverse event figures are not a realistic representation of any clinical trial data. Where are the phase I-IV trials?
Many studies of pregabalin for chronic pain show low compliance rates – with patients discontinuing treatment owing to serious adverse effects, or due to insufficient pain relief. However, those who take the drug for longer than a few weeks become addicted, without deriving appropriate pain relief, whilst their health starts to deteriorate. The patients invariably begin to develop memory problems and dementia, amongst other concerns, including depression and suicide, because pregabalin’s mode of action is to tell the brain to stop. The alarm was first raised with the authorities about this in 2008, highlighting serious concerns regarding the safety of patients using pregabalin (brand name Lyrica) and the legitimacy of the data used to bring the drug to the market.
Concealment and crimes against humanity
Evidence shows that the essential clinical components for licensing of pregabalin were not in place at the time that the drug was brought to the market in 2004 and regulatory recommendations have been made by opinion leaders who were receiving grants from the manufacturing company, Pfizer, rather than clear evidence-base. There are documented deletions and alterations of official documents in real time in the manner of seasoned gaslighters and these are clear to recognize in the audit trail. However, there were no checks and balances internally or externally.
Gaslighting is when an abuser manipulates information in such a way to make a victim question their sanity. Gaslighting intentionally makes someone doubt their memories or perception of reality. A gaslighter blames the victim for their own wrongdoing through reverse association. In this instance, records show that Pfizer has been falsifying clinical data and withholding evidence of patient harm whilst blaming the patients themselves for the side effects of their marketed drug. The fact that some of these patients may already be anxious or suffering from low mood does not help these circumstances. Once hooked, they are in for the long haul, perceiving that their cognitive decline and memory issues are due to their own circumstance. When I joined Pfizer’s regulatory division, the proportion of data fraud was so extensive and immediately obvious that I resigned from the regulatory project within seven weeks.
Tell the truth, or at least don’t lie
Evidence shows that patients are not being informed of the most serious side effects of pregabalin, which include deafness, blindness, respiratory depression, teratogenicity, neurological events (including depression and suicide), dementia and organ failure.
When a drug is causing the recipient to become deaf and go blind, whilst exhibiting birth defects on unborn children, it indicates that the patient is effectively being poisoned. The point about on-going safety monitoring is to ensure that medicines, both old and new, have appropriate risk:benefit assessments. There has to be some point to safety monitoring. But even as the EU regulator was filing reports of patient fatalities and cases of permanent blindness, I was being instructed by my clinically untrained manager to pay the agency and ask them to reconsider reviewing the already ambiguous wording on the product Data Sheet.
Although there were cases of suicide, liver failure, and permanent disability on record, including blindness, I was being instructed to assist Pfizer in obtaining a paediatric license. At this point I recognized that what I was faced with was criminally insane and took the decision to voluntarily resign. But no effort was made to safeguard the vulnerable patients who were continuing to be harmed as a result of Pfizer’s data fraud, and corporate failures.
Instead of acting on reported concerns, Pfizer would routinely punish and retaliate against any employee who refused to assist in manipulation of clinical data, alleging this to be a mark of their competence. Evidence shows that Pfizer runs drug licensing efforts, or indeed any litigation about them, like a political campaign, focusing on money, private lives, character assassinations, threat, intimidation, human rights violations, “cold war tactics”, and assessment of amenability of individuals to be influenced, rather than fact, scientific principles, or available recorded evidence:
It is clear to see that pregabalin’s Data Sheet has changed several hundred times in the post-marketing stage. There is extensive inconsistency from edition to edition of the patient and prescriber information and the presented data, including statements on the FDA’s website, are inaccurate to the extent that their contents do not correspond with scientific principle, or clinical knowledge. For example, it is suggested that one enantiomer (i.e. chemical image) of pregabalin was not converted to another in animal toxicity studies, when this is not simply possible in reality, so why mention it? Were there any employees who had actually set out to prove it?
Deletion and Conversion of Evidence
Records show that the recommendations in company-sponsored published literature invariably do not match the data in the same publication, the national guidance of the relevant countries, or indeed basic clinical knowledge. Records also demonstrate that clinically untrained management whose salary and bonus has directly benefitted from sales of pregabalin have been altering the clinical summaries written by field physicians. Even upon regulatory requests for further data and clarification, clinically unqualified employees including Judith Macdonald, Gwenaelle Pemberton (née Gwenaelle Bartley), and Frieda Houghton have continued to cherry pick from botched studies and alter disclosures. It is remarkable that the latter individual’s private pension plan has been boosted and fixed in a “police operation”, whilst patients have been dying and becoming disabled through Pfizer’s negligence and profoundly remarkable failures.
Such was the inhumane level of behaviour of Frieda Houghton that she made me turn up to work whilst I had two broken arms, questioning the validity of statutory sickness certificates of my doctor, then subsequently drafting my return to work assessment to suggest that I had an “alleged fall”. I mention this because a person who has no compassion towards their own staff will not be too concerned about the safety of patients that they never meet in person.
The audit trail of captured evidence shows that Judith Macdonald, had falsified and substantially altered my meeting minutes for a discussion with the European Medicines Agency, dated 7th July 2008. Audio recordings have also captured Gwenaelle Pemberton, who has no clinical training, falsifying the clinical summary of a metastatic cancer trial.
These amendments and substantial alterations have absolutely no relationship with the recorded discussions, or the minutes which were produced as a word-by-word transcript of the meetings, whilst bearing my name as the individual who had produced the transcripts per verbatim. There are no words to describe the lack of accountability of such depraved behaviour, whilst patients were evidenced to be dying, becoming addicted to pregabalin, and disabled as result. I refuse to be silenced about this because the entire point of my presence at the EU meeting or as a licensed regulatory employee was to ensure patient safety. Making sure that people don’t die is kind of the point of the job.
Although the correct procedures were followed for whistleblowing in June 2008, these disclosures became silenced, despite a looming trial in court. Records show that the judge was replaced by the manufacturer, Pfizer, and the evidence, including audio recordings of internal discussions about falsification of clinical summaries and a meeting with the EU Medicines Agency about licensing renewal of Lyrica, were misappropriated from the offices of DAC Beechcroft LLP, and Charles Russell Speechlys LLP, who were assisting in the distraction and cover up, whilst giving the wrong information to the court of law. This was two days immediately before a judicial determination by the replacement judge. Evidence shows that the legal representatives with responsibility for the case were influenced by Pfizer. Such was the extent of corruption that at one point Pfizer was falsifying the signature of the replacement judge on the demonstrably fallacious court records. Evidence shows that records were being substantially redacted, altered, and falsified by a Single Point of Contact, who clearly lacked the ability to pronounce or understand clinical concepts, and scientific principles, or the medical terminology involved in matters of pharmaceutical regulatory.
(https://colbetrust.wordpress.com/2019/07/05/the-social-view-of-pregabalin-prescribing/).
This was reported to the police. However, within the remarkable police reports and court documents, there are repeated references to Pfizer’s Single Point of Contact or self-proclaimed “legal fixer”. The Single Point of Contact turned out to be my former legal representative and there seemed to be no boundaries or accountability. The Presidential manner of making decisions instead of a judge, and therefore usurp of the judiciary, had achieved nothing except causing chaos, morass, and mayhem, whilst patients have continued to be harmed and permanently disabled.
No moral compass
Within factually inaccurate, racist, misogynistic, abusive, and substantially falsified court records that do not correspond in any capacity with available hard evidence, or the statutory law, I was being falsely accused of wrongdoing by reverse association to distract the proceedings, and being unjustly blamed for the lack of clinical literacy of the “legal fixer”, whilst my evidence was stolen and Pfizer was unreasonably refusing to release material evidence due to “commercial sensitivity”.
Regulatory law makes it abundantly clear that I am not responsible for actions of others when this is outside of my control. I voluntarily resigned from the pregabalin project when I recognized Pfizer’s data fraud, and then took the correct step of distancing myself when I became cognizant of the dishonesty and compassion deficit of those who were falsifying official documents. Records show that there have been no checks and balances whilst the case has been fixed through mock trials and moot courts in what is being mockingly portrayed as “open justice”. The Presidential perpetrator finds this lack of moral compass and inhumane perversity entertaining.
There is consolation in that I ensured keeping the case open and the conversation never stopped. Over a period of several years some tangible progress has been made by taking this matter to the Parliament. Although gabapentinoids are now controlled drugs in the UK as a result of these efforts, records show that there is still no clear information or support for the affected patients. There is still the issue of substantially falsified court records without a fair trial, three fake court orders against my property which the court itself refuses to acknowledge as legally valid, and the fact that patients are continuing to be unwittingly exposed to a drug in the market which has never been adequately tested whilst data has been falsified.
There has been public condemnation of the fact that the reproductive toxicity of sodium valproate was not being publicly discussed for a number of years and we have faced hesitation in the safety assessment of thalidomide in the past. However, in the case of pregabalin not only do we not have a scientific defense in the manner of the thalidomide case, in that we had no prior knowledge, evidence also shows that those in positions of authority have been repeatedly approached, over a 12 year period, without any decisive action being taken to safeguard the patients involved.
It is demonstrable that submitted Yellow Card reports regarding pregabalin’s serious adverse effects from prescribers and patients throughout the past 16 years have been silenced through payments from Pfizer, which is shocking to say the least. The regulators have had 16 years to properly assess the product. The patient and prescriber adverse event reports to the regulators might as well have been sent to a redundant post box.
It is damning for those responsible to only make changes when there is no choice, and there has been no justifiable reason as to why falsified clinical trial data and substantially altered court records have not faced a formal investigation. Although it may be subtly hidden, there is racism in the UK and the rising number of fatalities during the pandemic has put a spotlight on the extent of inequality and depth of declining health of the BAME community in particular. It is time for accountability, investigation of facts, and hard evidence.
How a reckless corporation has acheived regulatory capture
Evidence shows that in a reckless disregard of moral principles, or a sense of accountability, Pfizer has knowingly targeted mental health patients and psychiatric units of hospitals whilst offering free samples of pregabalin to vulnerable patients, for up to three months, commenting that these patients’ reported side effects would not be believed by the healthcare practitioners caring for them. Even after being confronted with evidence of permanent blindness in vulnerable patients, Pfizer has reluctantly accepted to place a braille on the packaging of Lyrica for the partially sighted patients who have become addicted to pregabalin. Even then Pfizer has failed to properly assess or review the safety of the drug, or go so far as providing the correct information about the association of irreversible adverse effects including organ failure, fatality, and permanent blindness as a causative association of Lyrica (pregabalin). A prescriber’s decision is only as good as the information that they are being provided by a manufacturer.
Investigation of the regulators’ records in the US, UK, and the EU, remains even more remarkable to this day. It is quite clear that pregabalin’s data has been falsified from the outset and that nobody has taken the time to read these records. Even after the reports of serious side effects have begun to flood in from both prescribers and patients in 192 countries, the regulators are evidenced to have repeatedly accepted payments from Pfizer to silence the disclosures. This means that prescribers have not been given the correct information about pregabalin’s fatal and disabling side effects and the Data Sheet has continued to contain false information with deliberately ambiguous wording to distract attention from the extent and severity of the risks involved. Although all drugs may demonstrate side effects, some are more important than others due to being irreversible.
Wilful Blindness
Evidence shows that in a reckless disregard or deliberate ignorance of the truth and falsity of the information, Pfizer has repeatedly presented fraudulent claims for payment to government programs such as the US Medicaid, and the UK National Health Service (NHS), whilst at least 4,923 patients have died and 265 patients have become permanently blind without any review or assessment. Those involved include the late Robin Williams. This is public information, and the numbers are simply the records held by the regulators’ own pharmacovigilance units. Given the fact that only a very small fraction of side effects are reported to the regulators, the real life numbers will be significantly higher. It is important and a moral obligation to question such things because if they are not directly confronted and addressed, the long term consequences will be devastating for humanity. It can lead to levels of systematic corruption that will become very difficult and challenging to say no to, eventually.
Botched legal proceedings and fraud against the NHS
Over many weeks, months and years, I have watched the reorganization of the healthcare system, with some amazement, as facts and hard evidence about pregabalin have continued to be silenced, misinterpreted, and misrepresented. Democratic activities were interrupted, and money was being poured in to make government payments over a drug that has never faced any real evaluation of its safety and efficacy. It is not clear how pregabalin has entered the market with no scientifically valid evidence to support its mass marketing.
On the surface, nobody seemed to speak out. But evidence shows that throughout this, healthcare professionals from every walk of life have been submitting reports and feedback, including Yellow Card reports, regarding fatal and disabling side effects of pregabalin, whilst the regulators did not enforce any measures to contain it. It took many years of patient advocacy to reclassify gabapentinoids to controlled drugs in the UK, and even then, records show that the drug’s manufacturer, Pfizer, has made payments to the regulators to turn a blind eye, which is ironic, and a paradox in itself.
All this secrecy had brought an atmosphere of silence and surreal emptiness to the corridors of a dark and highly illegal situation and then a catastrophe began that many, including me, were not so sure would ever come with such ferocity due to the extent of deterioration of public health.
The extent of the cover up
As clarified by the 2019 report by Public Health England, no less than 7.3 million prescriptions are being written for pregabalin. This report came out immediately before the pandemic. Now, consider for a moment, the actions of the authorities, since the whistle was blown on 29 June 2008, by allowing Pfizer to usurp their decisions:
— Denying that there was a problem;
— Repeated inadequate alterations of the Data Sheet while accepting payments from Pfizer to silence the reported adverse effects;
— Obstructing any kind of intervention from the judiciary, or the police;
— Encouraging retaliation of Pfizer against whistleblowing employees by forwarding all communications;
— And finally, telling people that a drug with 4,923 fatalities and 265 cases of permanent blindness has no safety concerns.
COVID-19
Twelve years after blowing the whistle about Pfizer’s systematic data fraud, healthcare providers have suddenly become part of a single team to face a viral pandemic that has overwhelmed us all. Suddenly the NHS is at breaking point. Some people may wonder why a viral infection currently sweeping the globe, in the manner of HIV, could have such a detrimental impact on the ageing population in particular. But those of us who work in the healthcare system are aware that a vast majority of patients with compromised immunity are taking an inadequately tested drug, and this is having a detrimental impact on their capacity to fight COVID-19. It is recognized that a large number of fatalities involve patients with co-morbidities, including diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and it may take a pandemic for the public to become awakened to it.
Reasons for the current hospital admissions are always the same: fever and breathing difficulties, fever and cough, respiratory failure. Radiology reports are always the same: bilateral interstitial pneumonia. All require hospitalization, except that the wards are full and there are no beds available for the patients fighting COVID-19. Even then, patients are continuing to take pregabalin, entirely unaware of the evidence to show that pregabalin may be contributing to their respiratory concerns. All over the NHS, there is tiredness on faces that don’t know what to do for the best, despite the exhausting workload ahead. There is solidarity in all of us, who go to our colleagues to ask, ‘what can I do for you now’? But how did a modern society end up being so ill-prepared for a viral pandemic?
To defeat an epidemic, people need to trust scientific experts, citizens need to trust public authorities, and countries need to trust each other. Over the last few years, irresponsible politicians have deliberately undermined trust in science, in public authorities, and in international co-operation. But to prevent a catastrophe, we need to regain the trust that we have lost. One cannot defeat a global epidemic through politics, propaganda and racial isolation. The real antidote is scientific knowledge and expertise that is not driven by a vested financial interest or false marketing of a drug such as Lyrica: (https://colbetrust.wordpress.com/2019/12/26/the-global-cost-of-americas-opioid-crisis/).
How trust in science was eroded
My experience of dealing with patients who suffer from chronic pain conditions is that there is often a long wait before they receive appropriate therapy and a lot of these patients have lost faith in the healthcare system by the time they do – particularly with patients who still don’t understand why they have pain. For example, the chronic pain associated with anxiety-related conditions can often be psychosomatic because by definition pain is an internal interpretation of neuronal activity. It is remarkably easy to distract the perception of pain without necessarily medicalizing it.
Recorded evidence shows that instead of providing a remedy, a combination of poor data integrity in the regulatory submissions, editorial control over external publications of sponsored clinical trials, and a light touch from the regulators are leading to patient safety issues which are not being addressed in a timely manner. In turn, this has resulted in compromised patient safety whilst people have become addicted, and deriving little tangible benefit. Patients are not being given the correct information about their prescribed medication to allow an informed consent, and this is against international law.
I still remember waiting for the outcome of a hearing after I had made the decision to stand up to Pfizer and speak out on behalf of vulnerable patients who were not being given the correct information about their prescribed medication. When I think about it, my anxiety over one mock trial and moot court case that was clearly fixed, whilst court records were being redacted and substantially falsified by Pfizer, pales in comparison now that I’ve seen what is happening amongst the wider society. The deterioration in public health is dramatic to say the least and the reality of it all is that the wider economic impact may have only just begun.
Records show that Pfizer’s extent of money laundering and deception was first exposed by seven internal employees, including me, in 2008 and the company found itself in a situation where they were required to “volunteer” over 2 million pages of emails and internal messages exchanged by employees to the intelligence investigators. At the time, I was pregabalin’s internal regulatory manager at Pfizer, but I blew the whistle and voluntarily resigned from the project because I am a regulated professional and I am not allowed by law to participate in any activity that puts my patients’ lives at risk, or if it constitutes fraud against the state’s National Health Service. The data fraud by Pfizer ticked all the boxes.
And then, something remarkable happened – Pfizer paid off Federal prosecutors and bought its way out of this in 2009. Out of the seven whistle blowers, I was the only one who didn’t accept money in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement. My integrity was not for sale. But all of Pfizer’s dirty laundry was sealed and court cases were mysteriously tidied up internally. Despite the extent of the cover up, the communications between the company’s management offered a grim snapshot of Pfizer’s corporate culture of dishonesty, clinical ignorance and deceit— high-level management insulting the intelligence of officials and their own regulatory employees because they were trying to do their job of safeguarding the lives of patients, discussing ways to mislead regulators, lamenting their own moral turpitude.
Although the investigators professed shock at the extent of Pfizer’s data fraud, and plain inaccuracy of regulatory documents, calling them “astonishing and appalling” and “incredibly damning”, Pfizer miraculously bought their silence in exchange for sealing the records from the public on 29 August 2009. Such is the extent of the money laundering that Pfizer’s shareholders have taken their own company to court for fraud, only to receive a pay out, whilst nobody has taken the time or effort to properly review the impact of pregabalin on the patients at the receiving end of it all. Records of Pfizer’s internal emails, memoranda, and corporate conduct paint a disturbing picture of the lengths that company has been willing to go in order to evade scrutiny from regulators, Federal prosecutors, and the public.
Pfizer’s lack of scientific practice, and their culture of dishonesty is at the heart of this problem, whilst there is next to no regulatory oversight or checks and balances. Records show that patient safety and quality of the marketed drugs have taken a second seat to scientific accuracy. It is mystifying that there are still some people who are surprised that corporations and their executives, left to their own devices, engage in unscrupulous, and sometimes deadly, behaviour. The catalogue of the ethical and moral misconduct of the Pfizer Corporation is impressive to say the least. It is unfortunate that these ethical and corporate failings of Pfizer have become the norm, rather than the exception over the years, whilst the regulator is looking away. This is negligent and a profound abuse of a position of trust.
Of course, it may well be that, in the case of Pfizer obsession with a substantial increase in profits has disrupted long-held corporate norms, transforming Pfizer’s culture into one that would put people’s lives at risk if it has meant a healthy quarterly return. Certainly, it’s easy to find examples of companies whose corporate culture has changed for the worse after their board appointed clinically uneducated management at the helm. But the ground state for corporations, barring infection from a malign force, is to operate according to the moral standards of the community in which they exist.
The elevation of profit above all else — a defining feature of an unregulated company — creates a permanent misalignment between the motivations and goals of corporations and those of their patients, as well as government funded services, such as the National Health Service. This misalignment doesn’t just drive a wedge between corporations and their customers. It also sours the relationship between bosses and workers, and amongst workers themselves. Nobody wants to go to work at a company that is harming their patients for income and failing to act on reported concerns.
Pfizer’s case is an extreme example of a broader phenomenon. Every day we’re implicitly and explicitly asked to keep quiet in the face of accounting malfeasance, health and safety violations, harassment and abuse of co-workers and outright negligence. We keep quiet because we accept that this is just how things are, and that there is nothing we can do to change it. But the cumulative effects are corrosive and ends up destroying societies and eventually the economy in the manner that we see during the current epidemic. But this silence strengthens a rogue corporation’s ability to pursue profits with impunity.
In the face of a steep decline in the state funding of regulatory agencies – which makes them open to corporate abuse – it is difficult to risk one’s career and reputation without being damaged by whistle blowing. In the choice between exit and voice, most people just try to find a different job, or voice their concerns by griping to their co-workers rather than confronting their employer, or going to court when the justice system is open to usurp of the judiciary. This leaves negligence and reckless practices and senior management in place, perpetuating abuse and malfeasance.
Sticking to the facts and hard evidence
It is quite right to question important matters in order to establish the facts. The UK statutory law was changed on 1 April 2019 by the ACMD (Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs), because of these persistent efforts to ensure integrity and embracing scientific principles.
But as explained, concerns remain in that pregabalin specifically was not adequately tested before marketing, and the US manufacturer, which is centrally managed and located in New York, is continuing to use feedback from the market to write prescribing information retrospectively, without inclusion of the most serious adverse effects. The on-going safety evaluation for pregabalin has been shown to be inconsistent and inaccurate.
In today’s society, the fundamental divergence between the values of corporations and the values of ordinary people may be constantly papered over. But sometimes, as in the case of Pfizer’s data fraud, and the hundreds of thousands of lives being lost over the inability to fight a viral infection, including healthcare colleagues, there is a disconnect that is simply impossible to ignore. It is in these moments that responsible scientists should emphasize this misalignment — and speak up because the power of corporations to shape the existence of ordinary people does not define scientific practice.
Honesty, kindness, decency, and dignity are the values that motivate most scientists, and healthcare professionals. We go into this job because we want to take care of people to the best of our abilities. So, instead of allowing a reckless corporation to shape a society according to its values, perhaps we should have institutions that ensure companies are operating according our moral standards, and scientific principles.
Two of society’s cornerstones are conscientiousness, and responsibility. Yet, even when those of us who have sufficient educational acumen to speak up do so, we find ourselves in a corrupted system of law and policing in which individuals think that they have the right to cut and run when the going gets tough, leaving whistle-blowers to pick up the pieces. How can anyone get away with behaving in such a reckless and inconsiderate way? What happened to common decency?
Since a mistake and an injustice has occurred, we still have an obligation to right the scales by speaking up. As a regulated healthcare professional I have a duty of candour, and a safeguarding responsibility towards the public. Honest and clear communication may yet set the path straight again. It is about time that we came out of the darkness of not knowing, and turned on the light.
For well over a decade pharmacists, doctors, and nurses have been submitting adverse event reports on behalf of their patients, and volunteers have been advocating tirelessly in the UK, US, and Australia to highlight a noble cause. All these efforts have been intended to safeguard the vulnerable and give them a voice whilst patients have continued to be affected without tangible support.
What we can do in these circumstances is to breathe in optimism so we can treat the whole world as if it’s a body in need of a big hug. Is this achievable? Yes! Start the ball rolling by being the change that you want to see, and speak up on behalf of those who may lack the voice to do so themselves. If we focus on hope, we’ll start a ripple of humanity that has the potential to go further. The world needs more change-makers, and I believe that telling the truth of those who defied the odds to succeed in making a change for better will inspire others to do the same. Thank you in advance for sharing this to show your support in giving a voice to the vulnerable patients affected.
Advice and precautions
If you are taking any anticonvulsant product discussed here, please do not stop taking your prescribed medication unless your prescriber advises you to stop.
References:
Fariba F. Gabapentinoids: Sponsored Trials for Off-label Use. September 2018, published by Amazon .ISBN:978-0-9571553-5-0
Colbé Trust 
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