Cancer Research; Not Exactly Trustworthy Edition

NEW YORK (AP) — Pfizer Inc. said Wednesday that an experimental breast cancer drug it is developing was more effective than an older therapy at slowing the progression of advanced breast cancer.

The problem I have with that is that it seems reasonably clear that Pfizer paid for the study. You can bet your ass that if the study had shown that the the drug was ineffective, it would have been buried deeper and with more secrecy than Jimmy Hoffa.

There is probably not much doubt that when a Big Pharma company pays for a study, the researchers know who is cutting the checks. That can't help but bias a study, even a little. For they know that if they repeatedly report results that their paymaster doesn't like, sooner or later, the checks are going to stop coming.

Probably the only company that could be trusted on research was AT&T's Bell Labs[1], because AT&T had a monopoly and they were going to make money anyway. Bell Labs had people who did basic research[2] into things that had no foreseeable economic utility. AT&T knew that it was the principles and discoveries from basic research that might later be applied. For example, without research into the properties of light, lasers could not have been developed.[3]

Big Pharma, on the other hand, has a long record of glowing "scientific" studies that are used to justify the release of new drugs-- drugs that are later taken off the market because the side effects include things like sudden death and growing oddball appendages.
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[1] And IBM.
[2] As opposed to "applied research".
[3] Just an example, though it was Bell Labs that patented the first laser (then called and "optical maser". Much patent litigation then followed for decades.