Replies to post #290367 on NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[longfellow95]

This whole issue is directly relevant to NWBO and their advancement of a potentially disruptive platform treatment.
And when I say 'disruptive', disruptive is the operative word!
It could, in time, represent a disruption to the established order in cancer treatment, and the pre-eminence of those BP guys.

Anyway, on the information war:-
Why should ruling elites be allowed to speak with 'unvarnished honesty' in private forums?
We can probably never avoid having 'elites', but 'ruling elites'?
Unelected elites shouldn't be allowed to rule.
Surely you wouldn't disagree?

Simple as that for me. Especially when they are shaping policy behind closed doors.
It's the antithesis of democracy.

It was Richard Horton himself, who made the now infamous remark about half of all scientific literature perhaps being false, in his commentary piece in the Lancet back in 2015.

Full piece here:-
https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736%2815%2960696-1.pdf

Of course he was talking about scientific literature in general.
He wouldn't be daft enough to say that half of everything in the Lancet itself was false!
But if he believed what he said in 2015, perhaps he should have worked harder to ensure that the Lancet bucked the trend he was talking about, and tried to maintain a reputation for quality, honesty, and rigour.
And the publishing of the Surgisphere 'paper' on HCQ amply demonstrates that the Lancet simply doesn't deserve its lofty reputation, in my opinion. That was supposed to have been 'peer-reviewed'. And the NEJM is just as bad, because they published the other Surgisphere paper (which I assume was equally rubbish). And when the whole Surgisphere thing was rumbled, both the Lancet and the NEJM issued 'letters of concern' and subsequently fully retracted within an hour of each other.

Surely if Horton had honour he would have resigned by now.

The open letter signed by the researchers from around the world (over 200 in the latest version) apart from demonstrating that the paper had to be false, stated or asked the following:-

The authors have not adhered to standard practices in the machine learning and statistics community. They have not released their code or data. There is no data/code sharing and availability statement in the paper. The Lancet was among the many signatories on the Wellcome statement on data sharing for COVID-19 studies.

And:-

Given the enormous importance and influence of these results, we believe it is imperative that:
1. The company Surgisphere provides details on data provenance. At the very minimum, this
means sharing the aggregated patient data at the hospital level (for all covariates and
outcomes)
2. Independent validation of the analysis is performed by a group convened by the World Health Organization, or at least one other independent and respected institution. This would entail additional analyses (e.g. determining if there is a dose-effect) to assess the validity of the conclusions
3. There is open access to all the data sharing agreements cited above to ensure that, in each jurisdiction, any mined data was legally and ethically collected and patient privacy aspects
respected
In the interests of transparency, we also ask The Lancet to make openly available the peer review comments that led to this manuscript being accepted for publication.

My bolding.

Now these are eminently reasonable requests.
But ones that will never be met, of course.

If the Lancet made available the peer review comments, it would inevitably show what a complete meaningless sham peer review actually is, at least in this case.

This leak from Chatham House comes into the realm of legitimate whistleblowing, as far as I'm concerned.
As does the video record of the nurse working in that 'hospital' in NY.
So those 200 plus researchers from around the world know that it's all a sham, because of the Lancet's continuing refusal to be transparent about how they came to publish something totally false.

Personally, I take it as read that the peer reviewers for the Lancet, the NEJM and any other 'top' scientific journals are 'remunerated' by Big Pharma in one way or the other, and have simply no objective credentials.

Though even a good peer reviewer couldn't be expected to pick up on every shortcoming in the reporting of clinical trials.
We know the sort of thing; use of dodgy control arms, hiding toxicity profiles, no mention of changes to study outcome measures etc etc etc.

And the other side to this, is that these same 'top' journals that are willing to publish both blatantly fraudulent stuff, but also the stuff that suffers from the type of flaws mentioned above, will also not touch stuff that they don't want to touch.
And that really means anything that potentially threatens the pre-eminent position of the Big Pharma companies.

We saw this with the DCVax-L interim report. I don't factually know, but I know in my bones that this was first submitted to one or more of the top journals. And they either got flat refusals or a succession of queries or requests for amendments (anything to delay), such that 6 - 12 months was wasted. And we know in the end it went to JTM.
Now some have questioned just how fast JTM got it out, and how could there have been proper peer review in such a short time.
But the fact is, it is open access, and anybody around the world can see it, and so it is open to more scrutiny than anything in the Lancet or NEJM.

So that episode, and other occurrences such as the 18 month partial hold lead me to hypothesise that NWBO will be 'slowed down' at every stage.
Right now, on the delay to achieving datalock, I just assume it is other parties (bad actors, if you like) that are causing the delay by putting impediments in the way. That's why I think that all this stuff about the company themselves wilfully protracting things, is just so much baloney.

We hear all the time on this Board about the potential of Direct and its widespread applicability, and the projections for so many billions of revenue down the line.
Does anyone honestly think that BP is going to say 'well done guys' and step aside quietly when a better immunotherapy (DCVax) comes along?
Are the regulators going to be objective?
Well, putting regulator and 'objective' together is the epitome of oxymoron.

The whole HCQ thing and how the journals, the regulators, the World Health Organisation have all come together to undermine HCQ, shows how bad things are.

And then the FDA puts out stuff like this without any real evidence or data at all:-

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning health care providers about a newly discovered potential drug interaction related to the investigational antiviral drug remdesivir, which has received emergency use authorization for the treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients with severe disease.

Based on a recently completed non-clinical laboratory study, the FDA is revising the fact sheet for health care providers that accompanies the drug to state that co-administration of remdesivir and chloroquine phosphate or hydroxychloroquine sulfate is not recommended as it may result in reduced antiviral activity of remdesivir. The agency is not aware of instances of this reduced activity occurring in the clinical setting but is continuing to evaluate all data related to remdesivir.

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-warns-newly-discovered-potential-drug-interaction-may-reduce?utm_campaign=061520_PR_FDA%20Warns%20of%20Drug%20Interaction%20With%20Drugs%20Authorized%20to%20Treat%20COVID-19&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua

OK, so what is this non-clinical lab study?
We will never know.

Here is another example of an extremely important piece of research that the 'top' journals wouldn't touch with a barge pole...
And the authors eventually took it to Sage Open Medicine, who understandably took it through rigorous peer review, and once satisfied, went ahead and published.
Once you see what it is about, you will know why!
And mainstream media will never, ever, print a word about it..

But if new parents are to be allowed to make informed choices, they should have this information easily accessible.
Which it never will be.


Regards.

[longfellow95]

And while you're at it, can I recommend this video:-

Take two and a half hours out to watch.
It will surely impact on any prior perceptions you may have held.

It's an absolute tour de force by DB.
My respect for that guy grows by the day.

And then maybe take a gander at this and its associated links:-
http://covexit.com/oxford-covid-19-research-praised-by-boris-johnson-blasted-by-france-soir/

And therein we have a real cognitive dissonance with the UK entirely asleep to what is going on (or any dissent is entirely silenced), yet France Soir and the awake medical community in France, doing a fine job of bringing things to light that are mostly happening in the UK!

I doubt many on the Board will actually follow these links, but I kind of wish they would, because depending how this plays out, it has far-reaching personal consequences for one and all.