By Leonid Schneider, on research integrity, biomedical ethics and academic publishing
What with the EU phase 2 clinical trial TETRA going nowhere, the technology’s owner, Liverpool-based company Videregen decided to seek new clinical partners. Surgeons and universities from outside the EU are invited to test Videregen’s trachea transplant technology, which was originally developed together with Paolo Macchiarini by the UCL laryngologist and paid Videregen advisor Martin Birchall.
Imagine you are Martin Birchall, laryngologist and ENT surgeon, star of regenerative medicine at UCL and trachea transplant enthusiast. You and your business partner Videregen need to explain to EU bureaucrats why your technology of decellurised cadaveric trachea is perfectly safe, what with all the dead patients of yours and your former best friend Paolo Macchiarini. Yet both your trachea transplant pigs die. EU authorities however accept this as proof that your method is safe!
The European Commission admitted that their €6.8 mn phase 2 clinical trial TETRA with cadaveric tracheas, led by the UCL laryngologist Martin Birchall is unlikely to ever recruit any patients. In January 2019, the status was changed to “grant agreement terminated”
This is a follow-up to the previous article, about a misconduct investigation at the Cardiff University in UK into theContinue Reading
The Cardiff University in UK is now investigating two cancer researchers, both senior professors, for suspected scientific misconduct. The evidenceContinue Reading
The European Union Commission staunchly refuses to tell me what exactly their funded scientists intend to do to the scheduledContinue Reading
The Science and Technology Committee of the British House of Commons is now dealing with the trachea transplants performed byContinue Reading
Before biology became digital, with its -omics and big data, there were mostly gels and microscopy images. The peak of image use in biomedical papers was reached at the turn of the century, those became the golden times of Photoshop-assisted data manipulation. To celebrate that period, I selected an example of the British cancer researcher Paul Workman, President and CEO of the huge Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London.
The esteemed London university UCL seems to live in its own world. There, the regenerative medicine magic thrives, living organsContinue Reading
With his three trachea transplant clinical trials suspended, the British laryngologist and UCL professor Martin Birchall now tries to pull at leastContinue Reading
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