Malcolm Kendrick - Doctoring Data: How to Sort Out Medical Advice From Medical Nonsense

Doctoring Data

How to sort out medical advice
from medical nonsense

Dr Malcolm Kendrick

Published by Columbus Publishing Ltd 2014
Kindle edition

www.columbuspublishing.co.uk

ISBN 978-1-907797-48-4
Rev 20150510

Copyright Dr Malcolm Kendrick 2014

Dr Malcolm Kendrick has asserted his rights to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior permission of the author.

Cover design by Lewis Kokoc

Typesetting by Raffaele Bolelli Gallevi

Brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

The content of this book is intended to inform, entertain and provoke your thinking. This is not intended as medical advice. It may, however, make you question current medical and nutritional advice. Thats your choice. Its your life and health in your hands. Neither the author nor the publisher can be held responsible or liable for any loss or claim arising from the use, or misuse, of the content of this book.

If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls who live under tyranny.

Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

A rollicking rant about everything that is suspect in modern medicine.

Professor Iona Heath, former president of the Royal College of General Practitioners

Dr Kendrick shares with the reader his wit, humor and laser-sharp insights to expose the misinformation underlying accepted health guidelines. His book is an expos on a broad range of flawed research and treatments, including the unnecessary and unhealthy reduction of cholesterol with statins, the dubious effectiveness of influenza treatment with Tamiflu and the demonization of saturated fat. Dr Kendrick has a unique talent to explain the conceptual and methodological flaws in a broad range of scientific studies which is of value to all clinicians, and is presented at a level which can be understood by laypeople. This book is a must read for anyone interested in becoming aware of how deception and financial conflict interest have dominated current health guidelines and treatment recommendations.

David Diamond, Ph.D. Departments of Psychology, Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology, University of South Florida and Medical Research Service, Tampa Veterans Hospital

In this witty expos, Dr Malcolm Kendrick daringly prises open paradoxes, trade secrets and shoddy statistics that lie behind so much of modern medicine.

His highly entertaining and informative book undermines accepted wisdom of Britains biggest health risks and shines a spotlight onto how persuasive and profit hungry drug companies have brought harmful and potentially unproven treatments to market.

Dr Kendrick is a maverick but his disturbing assertions are worryingly backed by strong evidence.

Lucy Johnston. Health and social affairs editor, The Express

Dr Malcolm Kendrick will challenge you to question everything youve ever been told about science from the media, from the so-called experts and those organizations with vested interests.

As an investigative journalist, Ive always believed that a fact is a fact, but now I question whether a fact is also the truth. Dr Kendrick reveals much of what weve been told by trusted health authorities has been influenced in some way, either by poor quality evidence or industry sponsorship, or both. Most concerning is that these issues affect the very guidelines that influence doctors prescribing habits and the distribution of health advice.

Scientific research is supposed to encourage critical thinking but as Kendrick points out time and time again, those who rock the boat and challenge the establishment, are often persecuted - either with threats to funding, to their careers and/or their reputations.

As a former scientist, there were moments in this book where I felt utterly frustrated with my former profession. Cognitive dissonance is widespread in an environment where there is competition for laboratory funding and the publication of results in prestigious journals. With most of the clinical drug trials nowadays being funded by the manufacturers who directly profit from drug sales, its no wonder we have biased science that accentuates the benefits and underplays the risks. Sound cynical? I encourage you to read the book and make up your own mind.

This book promises to take you on a journey that will both frustrate and enthrall you.

Dr Maryanne Demasi, Ph.D. Producer/Investigative reporter, ABC TV Australia

Malcolm Kendrick is the Mark Twain of medical writers, wielding his own pen warmed up in hell hell, in this case, being a medical system designed to persuade doctors that nearly everyone with a pulse is abnormal and in need of treatment. In fact, I can summarize Kendricks Doctoring Data by paraphrasing Twain himself: If your doctor doesnt read the medical literature, he is uninformed. If he does read the medical literature, he is misinformed.

Your doctor can afford to be misinformed. You cannot - that is, unless you dont mind being diagnosed with a previously unknown disease which was discovered just in time to coincide with development of a new wonder drug which was approved based on suspicious data from a study designed and run by the drug-maker which paid key opinion leaders to sit on a government committee that wrote the treatment guidelines which instruct your doctor to prescribe the new wonder drug which produces nasty side-effects which must be treated with more wonder drugs.

Kendrick pulls back the curtains and invites the reader to understand how this system works (or more correctly, doesnt work), serving as a tour guide who happens to be as laugh-out-loud funny as he is informative. For your own protection, I suggest you take the tour.

Tom Naughton, health blogger and writer/director of the documentary
Fat Head: youve been fed a load of bologna

Doctoring Data is the perfect antidote to the medical establishments recycled dogma. Dr Malcolm Kendrick is one of the sharpest, best informed, most provocative challengers of received medical wisdom. His engagingly irreverent and witty insights into how scientific fact and consensus is manufactured are electrifying. Whether he is turning his attention to drug trials, or to bariatric surgery, everything Dr Kendrick writes is worth reading.

Joanna Blythman, award-winning journalist and author of
Shopped, What To Eat , and Bad Food Britain

The only end of writing, said Samuel Johnson, is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it. The great man would clearly have treasured every page of Doctoring Data.

Kendricks latest work is the ultimate expos on the modern medical establishment.

Every reader stands to change their lives forever after reading this book. If that fact does not make you seek out a copy then stay smiling in the dark. Ignorance is bliss, until it kills you.

Justin Stoneman, Journalist and broadcaster

If every doctor and scientist had as much honesty, integrity and quick wit as Dr Kendrick then we would not be in such a sorry state of affairs. If you want to become a better doctor or scientist then you need to read this book.

Sam Feltham, Author of Slimology & Founder of Smash The Fat

Kendrick is witty, hard-hitting, and irreverent, as he illuminates some of the egregious scientific practices that have been used to underpin many of our misguided health recommendations today. He makes complex scientific subjects simple for the average reader - like whats wrong with linear modeling? His investigation into corporations that finance scientists - the hand that feeds - is a special treat.