Cardiologist Aseem Malhotra in Oslo: – When my father died, I started studying vaccines

Photo: Guro Skjelderup

– A doctor without skills in critical assessment has a handicap on par with not being able to use a stethoscope. “Evidence-based medicine” has been hijacked by industry and corrupt systems, said cardiologist Aseem Malhotra when he visited Oslo recently.

Of Julia Schreiner Benitoeditor at hemali.no

Until 2021, Malhotra was an outspoken supporter of vaccines in general and those against covid-19 in particular. On Good Morning, Britain he encouraged the population to take them, and he himself took two doses. His father, a doctor like his son, was also vaccinated against covid-19. When the father died at the healthy age of 72, the son demanded an autopsy. Finding blockages that could not be explained by anything other than the vaccine, Aseem began to read. Now he warns against mRNA.

Do no harm

Cardiologist Aseem Malhotra was among the speakers at the “Do no harm” conference in Oslo on 19 November. The recording of Malhotra’s lecture is open here, Hemali reproduces an excerpt.
– Most doctors lack skills in critical assessment. It is a handicap on par with not being able to use a stethoscope, said Malhotra.

For decades, Malhotra worked to raise awareness of the harmful effects of sugar, insulin resistance and obesity. He has also distinguished himself as a critic of the statin industry – cholesterol-lowering drugs are among the industry’s most lucrative. And the evidence that such benefits outweigh the harm does not exist, Malhotra has shown.

Malhotra refers to fear and willful ignorance

At the conference in Oslo, Malhotra emphasized that he was only representing himself, no organisation. Regarding the pandemic, Malhotra pointed to two psychological aspects which, according to him, make us vulnerable:

– Fear. The correlation between fear and the reduced capacity for critical thinking is clear.
– Willful blindness: When we turn a blind eye to the truth to avoid conflict, to feel safe, or to protect our ego and/or prestige.
– The best method to address these aspects is cold facts and compassion, said Malhotra.

What is worse than ignorance? The illusion of knowledge. Stephen Hawking.

In September, Malhotra’s overview article became Curing the pandemic of misinformation on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines through real evidence-based medicine published in the Journal of Insulin Resistance. Malhotra is a board member of the journal’s editorial board.
– I chose that publication because it does not receive money from industry, and because it is the only one that would publish an article of 10,000 words. From the journal’s articles of association: Any colleagues with declared conflicts of association with the food or pharmaceutical industry will be assessed based on their suitability for assessment. Conflicts deemed material will mean exclusion from the manuscript review process.

– So-called evidence-based medicine has been overthrown by industry and corruption

– So-called evidence-based medicine has been hijacked by the pharmaceutical industry and corrupt systems, Malhtra said during the conference.
– It is a failed system that misinforms patients and, in the worst case, harms them. Most of the research is not for the patient, but for commercial interest.

Malhotra refers to one of the world’s most cited researchers, the epidemiologist Dr. John Ioannidis in the article How to survive the medical information mess:
– Ioannidis is a Hawkin in medicine, a genius of high integrity, said Aseem, referring to conclusions in the article:

Most doctors and health personnel are not aware of the consistent lack of clinical evidence for the effectiveness of drugs.
It contributes to significant overconsumption, underconsumption, unnecessary side effects, wasted health resources and lost opportunities for good care and treatment.
Much published medical research is unreliable, provides no benefit to patients and is of no use to policy makers.
Few health professionals are aware of this problem.
Health professionals lack the necessary skills to evaluate the reliability and usefulness of medical evidence.

– Doctors get their information from the media

– When there was talk of requiring British healthcare personnel to be vaccinated, I called the chairman of the BMA – British medical association, Malhotra said during the lecture at Klingenberg in Oslo.
– For two hours I explained to him why it is unethical and unscientific. He replied that no one had informed him so critically and thoroughly before, adding that “most doctors and my colleagues get their information from the BBC.”
– When one of the leaders of the CDC – Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – was asked where her optimism regarding the vaccines came from, she replied: CNN! The CNN reporter who conveyed the positive news about the covid vaccines turned out to get his information from Pfizer’s press release.
– So a manager in a medical control body says that she gets her information from Pfizer, Malhotra summarized in the lecture.

– So a manager in a medical control body says that she gets her information from Pfizer.

– The pharmaceutical companies commit themselves to the shareholders, not the patients

Malhotra pointed to Peter Gøtzsche’s report Big pharma often commits corporate crime, and this must be stopped, published in the British Medical Journal:

– Pharmaceutical companies are obliged to make money on behalf of their shareholders, not to serve the patient. Although many like to think so, they are not required to sell the best products for the benefit of the patient. Medical control bodies fail to prevent such practices. Doctors, institutions and journals that have responsibility for the patient and for scientific integrity collaborate with the industry for profit.

According to Peter Gøtzsche, misuse and overuse of prescription drugs is the third biggest cause of death after cancer and heart disease. From 2009 to 2014, the pharmaceutical industry was fined $13 billion for cheating, primarily hiding data about side effects.

– This is their business model, said Aseem during the lecture.
– Deliberate deception to make money.

You change a molecule here and there, and patent the “new” drug.

Copies of older drugs are presented as “innovative”

– Of course there are good medicines that save lives, he added. But they are few: Malhotra pointed to the report Institutional corruption of pharmaceuticals and the myth of safe and effective drugsand gave an example from it.
– Of the 1,000 drugs that were approved in France from 2,000 to 2,011, the analysis shows that half of them are copies of older drugs. You change a molecule here and there, and patent the “new” drug.

The net effect of medicines in recent decades has been negative.

Furthermore, the report shows that the pharmaceutical industry spends 19 times more money on marketing than on basic research and development. And that of the 1,000 drugs that were approved, the analysis found that 15 percent of them caused more harm than good. Only 8 percent proved to be innovative in reality. Malhotra concluded:
– The net effect of medicines in recent decades has been negative.

Former editor of NEJM: – It is not possible to trust published research

The former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, Marcia Angell, is yet another who has shown the brutality of the industry and the journals. And the inability of the medical control bodies to do their job.

– It is no longer possible to trust clinical, published research, she says.
– Or to rely on doctors’ assessments, or official medical guidelines. I am not happy with that conclusion, which I came to hesitantly and reluctantly during my two decades as editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. She cites some examples:

Of 667 new drugs that were approved by the FDA – US Food and Drug administration – between 2000 and 2008, only 11 percent were truly innovative. 75 percent were actually copies of older drugs, Angell pointed out.

References

Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial. British Medical Journal.
Why most published research findings are false, John Ioannidis.
Postmarket Safety Events Among Novel Therapeutics Approved by the US Food and Drug Administration Between 2001 and 2010
British Medical Journal: The EMA covid-19 data leak, and what it tells us about mRNA instability.
British Medical Journal October 2020: Will covid-19 vaccines save lives? Current trials aren’t designed to tell us
British Medical Journal: Big pharma often commits corporate crime, and this must be stopped
National Library of Medicine: Cutting Edge: Circulating Exosomes with COVID Spike Protein Are Induced by BNT162b2 (Pfizer-BioNTech) Vaccination prior to Development of Antibodies: A Novel Mechanism for Immune Activation by mRNA Vaccines
National Library of Medicine: Duration of immunity following full vaccination against SARS-CoV-2: a systematic review
National Library of Medicine: Beyond Shielding: The Roles of Glycans in the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein.
National Library of Medicine: Informed consent disclosure to vaccine trial subjects of risk of COVID-19 vaccines worsening clinical disease.
National Library of Medicine: How to survive the medical misinformation mess
National Library of Medicine: Why most published research findings are false
National Library of Medicine: Institutional corruption of pharmaceuticals and the myth of safe and effective drugs
National Library of Medicine: Antibody-dependent enhancement and SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and therapies
National Library of Medicine: The potential danger of suboptimal antibody responses in COVID-19
Pfizer’s director Albert Bourla told the Washington Post: “mRNA technology had never delivered a product. I was surprised when they suggested that was the way to go.”
SSRN, Elsevier: COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters for Young Adults: A Risk-Benefit Assessment and Five Ethical Arguments against Mandates at Universities
SSRN: Major Shortcomings of the First Who-Recommended RT-QPCR to ‘Detect’ SARS-CoV-2 and to ‘Diagnose’ COVID-19. NGS Provides Evidence that Successive Waves of SARS-CoV-2 Variants Lack Genomic Relationship
Our world in data: Daily new confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people.
The Lancet: Risk of infection, hospitalization, and death up to 9 months after a second dose of COVID-19 vaccine: a retrospective, total population cohort study in Sweden
The Lancet: Offline: What is medicine’s 5 sigma?
Journal of Insulin Resistance: Curing the pandemic of misinformation on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines through real evidence-based medicine.