Tainted By Association

"After publication of our Lancet Article, several concerns were raised with respect to the veracity of the data and analyses conducted by Surgisphere Corporation and its founder and our co-author, Sapan Desai, in our publication. We launched an independent third-party peer review of Surgisphere with the consent of Sapan Desai to evaluate the origination of the database elements, to confirm the completeness of the database, and to replicate the analyses presented in the paper."

"Our independent peer reviewers informed us that Surgisphere would not transfer the full dataset, client contracts, and the full ISO audit report to their servers for analysis as such transfer would violate client agreements and confidentiality requirements. As such, our reviewers were not able to conduct an independent and private peer review and therefore notified us of their withdrawal from the peer-review process."

The Lancet

Hydroxychloroquine has been pushed by Donald Trump and others as a possible treatment for people with coronavirus. Photograph: George Frey/Reuters

"There continues to be a fundamental misunderstanding about what our system is and how it works."

"There are also a number of inaccuracies and unrelated connections that you are trying to make with a clear bias toward attempting to discredit who we are and what we do."

"We do not agree with your premise or the nature of what you have put together, and I am sad to see that what should have been a scientific discussion has been denigrated (sic) into this sort of discussion."

Surgisphere’s CEO, Sapan Desai

Unheard of, that a medical journal with the prestige and influence in the scientific/medical community of the British medical journal The Lancet would withdraw an article they published, but this has happened to an article whose conclusion was that hydroxychloroquine had the effect of increasing death risk in COVID-19 patients. Because of this conclusion and the fact that the article was taken seriously by the scientific community, other research into the possible use of the malaria drug for COVID-19 went into permanent pause, infuriating the researchers involved.

 

The Lancet, in seeking after publication to verify the conclusion based on data given the researchers, the main author of whom was Professor Mandeep Mehra, from the Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, who himself chose to withdraw the article and its conclusion, asking The Lancet to do just that, based on the fact that data received from Surgisphere, an American company that bills itself as a leader in healthcare data analytics and medical education, founded by Mr. Desai, failed to produce, as promised, the data set for further inspection.

 

This prompted Professor Mehra and the two other authors of the study to state that since an independent review could not proceed in verification of the accuracy of the data, they "can no longer vouch for the veracity of the primary data sources". The fourth study author was in fact, Dr.Sapan Desai, chief executive of Surgisphere. And nor was this study the only one that placed its reliance on Surgisphere data, sharing the same lead author, Harvard Medical School Professor Mandeep Mehra. That study too, published in the New England Journal of Medicine was retracted as well, for similar reasons. 

 

What seems puzzling is that both journals published these articles on trust of accuracy, when if in fact there was any question respecting the veracity of the data supplied by this company, it should have been done as part of the peer review process before publication. A serious lapse in judgement on t he part of the two trusted publications. And it seems obvious that the global pandemic itself is to blame, in the rush by scientists to find a control for the virus, a possible vaccine for a viral threat that has placed the world order and huge populations into lockdown, exacting a malevolent cost in human life.

 

"When you have reputable journals that put this kind of work out and are retracted ten days later, it just increases mistrust."

"It just adds fuel to the fire of this controversy around hydroxychloroquine. It's the last thing we needed with this particular drug."

Dr.Walid Gelad, professor, medical school, University of Pittsburgh