EXPOSED:
THE BOGUS WORK OF PROF BRIGGS Page 3
But Deakin
University did not have the elaborate and costs
equipment for the work Briggs had described, and he
gave no indication of where the tests had been
performed.
Another query
was raised over where Briggs had obtained one of the
hormone products, desogestrel, which was not licensed
for use in Australia, but for which he published
results.
In one paper,
tables contradicted the text, and in another a
measurement technique used for human subjects relied
on a standard meant for sheep. A third, a paper
reporting work with beagle dogs, could not have been
done as Briggs claimed because there are no beagles
at Deakin.
Under pressure
from complaints brought by specialists at Deakin and
in Melbourne, vice-chancellor Jevons questioned
Briggs, who made a number of checkable claims. But
Briggs went to law, using a procedural point to block
a university investigation. After attempting to
support him, Jevons finally changed his mind.
“I think
this was the first time in history that the law was
used to stop a scientific investigation,” says
Jevons, now an emeritus professor at Deakin.
“That was the turning point for me. I defended
him up until then.”
BY THIS time,
however, Briggs’ work had managed to penetrate
medical literature, even though none of his results
of any real importance on contraception has been
published in a major medical or science journal.
Instead, his key work appeared substantially through
the medium of drug-company sponsored books.
These
publications, essentially transcripts of
specially-arranged symposia, provide a quick, cheap,
but poorly-vetted means of issuing new research to
doctors. Briggs’s work therefore acquired
“respectability” through symposia in
Madrid; in San Francisco, financed by Schering; and
in Leuvens in Belgium financed by Wyeth.
Had Briggs
offered his findings to one of the major medical or
scientific journals, which normally employ panels of
experts to “referee”, or vet papers,
suspicions might have been aroused that would have
caught him out. But the eminent editors of the
symposia proceedings could not have had the time or
the resources to make any rigorous inquiries of
Briggs.
“The
editor can’t go and check whether the laboratory
equipment existed or the patients existed,” says
Professor Max Elstein, who edited the San Francisco
proceedings, and who chaired another symposium last
week in Chicago. “You rely on the scientific
integrity of the person who supplies the data.”
Despite these
difficulties, and the consensus in medicine and
science that symposia proceedings should not been
given too much weight, they were submitted by drug
companies to national licensing authorities and were
extensively used to promote brands of pills to
doctors. In Wyeth promotions, still being distributed
in Chicago last week, Briggs’s material is used
to authenticate important safety claims.
Promotions
directly to family doctors have also been dominated
by references to Briggs’s work. “No
significant lipid impact up to 18 months of
use,” declares a Wyeth worldwide advertising
campaign, quoting a Wyeth symposium paper.
WHEN Briggs
quit Deakin a year ago and retired to a villa in the
south of Spain, the university council ruled that
this was not an admission of guilt. “No charge
or complaint is proved against professor
Briggs,” declared Mr Justice Ashe, the
chancellor, accepting the resignation. “Nothing
adverse to his reputation has been established and no
inferences to him should be drawn.”
This was not,
however, the verdict of the international scientific
community. Last October, a special meeting was held
in West Berlin, solely to discuss Briggs. British
doctors agreed that researchers should no longer use
his findings. They believe that the deceptions
discovered in his work are so serious that earlier
papers, relating to many more contraceptive products,
must now be re-examined.
“What is
clear is that we must not now trust any of the
earlier work that he did,” says Dr John
Guillebaud, director of the Margaret Pyke family
planning centre in London, who attended the Berlin
discussion. “The reviews and letters are all
right, but we can’t accept the research.”
However, these
have remained private decisions. Although the charges
against Briggs are common knowledge at a senior level
in the pharmaceutical industry and among researchers
on the pill, most of those who know have been
unwilling to tell the tale. “I’m sorry, I
can’t help you any further,” said
Guillebaud. “Not in my position.”
No suggestion
of complicity by the drug companies has been made -
indeed Briggs often acknowledged the firms that
supplied products for his tests. Wyeth International
said last week that, although it had financed Briggs,
it was “supporting” rather than
“sponsoring” his research. proposals for
studies came from Briggs, not the company.
Schering AG
said it never doubted his work. “Professor
Briggs had a very high rank in the medical community.
He was consultant for oral contraception to the World
Health Organisation for many years. He has published
extensive work. He was looked upon as a real
authority in the field,” sys Dr Ursula
Lachnit-Fixson, head of Schering’s hormone
research and inventor of triphasics. “We have no
reason whatsoever to doubt that his work has been
done correctly.”
WHEN we first
pulled up outside Briggs’s new home in Marbella
it was clear such an arrival by a newspaper was the
sort of event he had long feared.
Despite a
series of admissions, he denies that the matter is of
any significance. The results he produced were
similar to those of other researcher, he tells us,
and the link between blood chemistry changes and
long-term illness was still a matter of medical
speculation. It was not his fault that so much had
been made of his work.
“What am
I supposed to do?” he said, during one of
several moments when he almost broke down. “In
any case, can’t you leave her out of it?”
he added, nodding towards his wife, who shared much
of his work. “It’s me, really, you are
interested in.”
Also
read Brian Deer's piece: Selling the pill like
soap
