October 2017 April 2015 | Página 12

Te Puawai
“Further bias was highlighted by Otis Brawley,
the chief medical and scientific officer of the
American Cancer Society, and Paul Goldberg,
the editor of the Cancer Letter. (2) They
pointed out that the non-screened Swedish
men who contributed to the two studies were
not even informed that they were in a clinical
trial.” [italics added]
Last but not least is the conflicts of interest
issue. Several senior authors of the European
trials as well as their American supporters,
have conflicts of interest that relate to
payments from companies involved in
marketing PSA tests, or in holding patents in
PSA and prostate cancer diagnostic space.
Professor Ablin concluded his opinion piece
by stating “As a result, those physicians who
have not examined the data in depth are now
treating patients on the basis of deeply flawed
data. How flawed? That’s the real issue:
because the authors won’t release their data,
we don’t know.”

It is imperative, he states, that “our regulatory
bodies must insist that clinical trials, and
especially taxpayer-funded ones, be open to
scrutiny by independent investigators who
have no ties to industry. Hoarding data,
especially flawed data, is unacceptable when
lives are at stake.”

References
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/26/opinio
n/the-problem-with-prostatescreening.html?_r=0
2. Otis Brawley & Paul Goldberg are the
co-authors of “How We Do Harm.” Chapter 20
has a graphic and disturbing account of what
happened after Ralph DeAngelo went for a
prostate
cancer
screening
test.

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