Spanish study

[Guest guest]

Hi guys,

Here is the latest on the Spanish randomised study (for those who haven't

been following, a group of women were randomly assigned to choice of ufe or

hysterectomy vs. hysterectomy only. The second group were not informed that

they had options and were not told they were subjects of a clinical trial.

The hospital ethics committee had OK'd the trial!)

- no one from this group offered to help me protest so far (which I was a

little disappointed about, but maybe there are no Spanish speakers on the

list right now or you are too busy) , but friends of mine in London who

have lots of contacts in publishing and journalism in Spain have said they

will help me find a journalist who campaigns on women's health

- Now, I found the Spanish hospital's website and noted that it was

sponsored by Biosphere. So I wrote to Biosphere asking them if they really

wanted to be sponsoring doctors who have such scant regard to ethics. I

will openly admit, my email was a little sharp, I pointed out that it did

not fit in with the " image " they like to project of being an ethical

company, who are of course only interested in helping women. I further

remarked that it seemed to me they were happy to accept that a group of

women in Spain get hysterectomised without being informed of alternatives,

and studied without being informed in pursuit of business..... All I asked

them to do, was to write a letter to the researcher concerned and ask her

to think carefully about they way she conducts her research. Oh, I forgot

to mention, most of the doctors involved in this study were female (I say

female - and not women).

Find the answer I received from Biosphere's Vice President Tom Keenan in my

next email to the group. It makes very interesting reading. I haven't

answered yet, but I am thinking about it. In fact, I probably couldn't ask

for a better answer, I think a journalist would have a field day with it.

He more or less told me straight, that Biosphere don't care who they work

with, as long as it is good for the business.

When I reply to Tom, I will point out that I spend most of my waking hours

(those that aren't taken up by my 50 hour a week PR job) also helping

women find out about their options. In fact I spend a lot of time and my

own personal money in effect doing PR for Biosphere. My extremely good

services (I am qualified and experienced in public relations) are

absolutely free to Biosphere!! This is rather useful to them in Germany,

because there has been little progress with UFE so far. Neither Biosphere

nor Boston Scientific have put any effort into helping to get an insurance

code for the procedure. Neither have the doctors. The only person trying to

work on this is me.

I will also let him know about a little story I read in the Financial Times

a couple of years ago, about physicians in Nazi Germany. Apparently

researchers in concentration camp Dachau threw people into cold water to

find out how long it took them to die. The author of the article pointed

out that these were not crackpots, but respected scientists. He also

pointed out that the results of the research were extremely useful and used

today by rescue services to calculate how many survivors there might be

after an accident at sea. The article was entitled " Does the end justify

the means " . Tom might like to have a little think about that.