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A profile in Nature Biotechnolgy (September 2008) states:
Marcia Angell, a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and author of The Truth About Drug Companies, describes Sharav
as an extraordinarily observant and valuable critic.
"I see her as someone the research establishment badly needs."
In contrast, Arthur Caplan, chair of the department of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, views Sharav
as a dangerous gadfly. "She's best on the subjects she knows
something about, like psychiatry, which she hates," he says. "But when she attacks efforts to find better therapies for emergency situations [e.g., blood substitutes], she causes real harm and she risks killing
people..."
The author of the profile failed to inform Nature readers that Arthur Caplan's institutional review board (U of Penn) had approved Northfield Laboratories' widely criticized, ethically dubious, artificial blood expreriment--and had a financial stake in defending it.
The expoeriment was conducted on unconscious, non-cosenting trauma patients--even after an earlier trial with consenting patients
undergoing elective surgery was suspended when 10 out of 81 patients suffered heart attacks within a week of receiving the substitute, PolyHeme, and that 2
of those people died.
February 22, 2006, The Wall Street Journal reported that in addition to
the heart attacks and deaths, the trial suggested the PolyHeme was linked
with other adverse events such as heart rhythm aberrations and pneumonia.
These events occurred in 54% of the PolyHeme patients versus 28% in the
control group, according to Northfield's internal documents. See: Red Flags:
Amid Alarm Bells, A Blood Substitute Keeps Pumping By THOMAS M. BURTON; Page
A1 http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/86/81/
On February 24, 2006, Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee wrote to FDA Commissioner, Dr von Eschenbach: "It is outrageous that, for all intents and purposes, the FDA allowed a clinical trial to proceed, which makes every citizen in the United
States a potential "guinea pig," without providing a practical, informative
warning to the public."
Click here for full profile
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