Trial By Error: An Open Letter to Dr Godlee about BMJ’s Ethically Bankrupt Actions

I don't have a question formed, but just discovered the following presentation by her: https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/news-event...dnt-believe-what-you-read-in-medical-journals

It is from Nov 2017.

Some very interesting stuff from 36minutes onwards looking at the issue of conflict of interest - with ideas such as having policy for BMJ education section where only researchers who are independent can write reviews etc.

Unsure what to make of the April fools around 16mins in though the word motivation is something we've seen inserted into certain anonymous case studies and descriptions in the past.

I don't know whether things have changed/whether this continued in the years since - nor whether it somehow didn't apply to 'therapist based treatments'.

 

Wow this is just one big hard-sell (I refuse to use the term marketing because technically that requires an orientation where the product meets a need the 'customer' has...properly/well, unless as we might suspect the 'customer' isn't the patient) strategy. Page 10 particularly concerning.

"Presentation with FS is associated with twice the standardised mortality ratio for cancer, accidents and suicide. FS is sometimes associated with serious mental illness such as severe depression with high suicide risk." (page8 ) The implications of them claiming this are huge. In as far as scaring GPs under the 'duty of care' to hand them over and the implications re: mental health act and people's freedom. Combine this with a lot of common sense that putting people through such a process that doesn't help their illness is harmful and no proof it helps I find the whole thing so sickeningly immoral and illogical.

If it is that bad it becomes doubly important you don't hand someone over to something that is a load of tosh for which there are extensive rumours of horrible treatment to the point someone in the FOI termed it 'humiliating treatment' as a summary. Or maybe that is part of the reason for the rate being high - why would you not investigate that to check given how long they've been operating it.

Astounds me on dept can get away with terrible rates on things and yet noone dares to ask whether it is because they just are at best not very good at the treatment side, probably misguided and not helping, worse exacerbating with said misguidedness and causing the very lifelong trauma and exacerbation of power issues they claim to care about. When did someone get to just say 'they care' and that counts as 'they must be doing the right thing'?