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Would You Take a Cancer Cure Proven Effective in a Predatory Journal?GcMAF
Magic potion?
I am writing this blog post in hopes of starting a conversation in the scientific community about the medicine called GcMAF and one of the companies that is currently distributing it, a company called GcMAF.eu
GcMAF means “Gc protein-derived macrophage activating factor,” according to the short article about it on Wikipedia. The drug is currently being marketed as a cure for many ailments, including cancer, autism, MS and Parkinson’s disease.
I am concerned about this drug and its marketing for these reasons:
1. Apparently, some of the same people who are researching the drug also are involved in marketing and selling it.
2. Some (not all) of their research has been published in questionable journals, including one published by a publisher that is on my list.
3. The drug is not approved by any competent authority (FDA, EMA) to treat any disease.
The following three articles report favorably on GcMAF and appear in the American Journal of Immunology a journal published by Science Publications, a publisher on my list. The three articles are:
Thyer, L., Ward, E., Smith, R., Branca, J. J. V., Morucci, G., Gulisano, M., Noakes, D. & Pacini, S. (2013). Therapeutic effects of highly purified de-glycosylated GcMAF in the immunotherapy of patients with chronic diseases. American Journal of Immunology, 9(3), 78-84.
Smith, R., Thyer, L., Ward, E., Meacci, E., Branca, J. J. V., Morucci, G., Gulisano, M. R., Ruggiero, M., Pacini, A, Paternostro, F., Di Cesare Mannelli, L., Noakes, D. J., & Pacini, S. (2013). Effects of Gc-macrophage activating factor in human neurons; implications for treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome. American Journal of Immunology, 9(4), 120-129.
Ward, E., Smith, R., Branca, J. J. V., Noakes, D., Morucci, G., & Thyer, L. (2014). Clinical Experience of Cancer Immunotherapy Integrated with Oleic Acid Complexed with De-Glycosylated Vitamin D Binding Protein. American Journal of Immunology, 10(1), 23-32.
The first and the third articles report the authors’ experience with patients treated at the Immuno Biotech Treatment Center. From their website one sees that the cost is €6,000 a week for the center, and their hotel cost estimate is €1,800. This price is significantly higher than the €600 they charge for the GcMAF ampule alone. These patients have been an important source of revenue for this company.
As far as I can tell, none of the authors discloses affiliation to this center, so it is not clear who treated the patients. Moreover, there is no other information on this treatment center than the information on these articles and the website of this company. Thus it is rather strange that patients have to have a separate budget for their accommodation, which means there are being treated as outpatients. What is the point on making them travel to receive a treatment that could be given on an outpatient basis by one of the 350 doctors around the world claimed to be using GcMAF?
Science Publications logo
If the cure is so great, why publish your findings in such a low-quality journal?
The publisher of the journal, Science Publications, lists two addresses on its “Contact Us” page, one in Adelaide, SA, Australia and one in New York, NY, USA. I think both addresses are really those of mail-forwarding services and the publisher is hiding its true location, which remains unknown.
Why are these scientists publishing their work in a highly questionable journal operated by a non-transparent publisher? If the work is so groundbreaking (a cure for cancer, et al.), why not publish it in a legitimate journal where its impact would be greater, its conclusions more convincing?
Do any of the authors have any declarable conflicts of interest? If so, what are they? Where can I find them?
On the GcMAF.eu website, the site of the company that sells the potion, under the “Who we are” link, it says this:
We are a group of scientists led by Professor Marco Ruggiero MD, a molecular biologist and fully qualified medical doctor. The team includes a PhD and two BSc biomedical scientists. External doctors, oncologists and scientists kindly provide help and advice. We are committed to bringing GcMAF and its associated treatments to as many people as we can.
Ruggiero is listed as one of the authors of one of the articles above, so I assume the other authors are part of his team and are associated with the company GcMAF.eu.
One of the first scientists to research GcMAF was Nobuto Yamamoto, but his 2007 article on the compound was retracted.
Regarding pricing, the company’s website states
Our GcMAF is €600, plus €60 packing and shipping, for one 2.2ml vial. A vial is one third full and contains up to eight doses – one 100ng, 0.25ml dose a week.
I found the overall tone of the GcMAF website to be mean and self-righteous. It makes a lot of claims such as “Root canals are a major cause of the immune system being suppressed and they are a major cause of cancer.”
Is the published science behind GcMAF authentic, honest, and real? I ask that the bio-medical sciences community investigate this compound, the science behind it, and its marketing.
Coda: A good analysis of GcMAF is available from the Anticancer Fund here.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2014 at 9:00 AM and is filed under Scholarly Open-Access Publishers, Unethical Practices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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33 Responses to Would You Take a Cancer Cure Proven Effective in a Predatory Journal?
Yurii says:
July 24, 2014 at 3:08 PM
not until I see a series of multi-center clinical trials of sufficient statistical power to reach a favorable conclusion. Until then…. I call their BS
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wkdawson says:
July 24, 2014 at 4:56 PM
Well, it is _possible_ that they didn’t know the journal is predatory or they had too many bad experiences with very bad reviewers.
However, one thing that stuck out to me was that they seem to emphasise that they are “led by Professor Marco Ruggiero MD, a molecular biologist and fully qualified medical doctor”. I’ve noticed that certain types of cranks have a habit of attaching the “Dr”, “Professor”, “MD” credential as a prefix (or suffix) to their name.
It seems like most people who have seriously learned anything in graduate school probably would not chose to advertise their credentials to other people, as they would probably be keenly aware of how little they know, which is vastly more than what they do know.
Furthermore, a really good piece of innovative science probably doesn’t come in the form of an 8 page paper.
So, even if given the authors were right, I don’t think they are going about it the right way to show they are right.
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Dan Riley says:
July 25, 2014 at 8:39 AM
Marco Ruggiero is certainly no stranger to controversy or cranks, especially HIV/AIDS “skeptics”. But I’m not at all clear on what Jeffrey thinks the “bio-medical sciences community” can do about it.
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P Canning says:
July 25, 2014 at 5:16 AM
This is too much. Now open access publishers and all who publish in them are going to play with peoples lives. Isn’t this a strong enough reason that open access publishing should not be there?
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Jeanne A. Pawitan says:
July 25, 2014 at 5:42 AM
Dear Mr Beall,
There are 59 publications about GcMAP in Pubmed, and I believe that you can trust medical journals that are listed there. It is indeed acting on cancer, and it appears that a company has produced and commercialized it.
However, as with any other drugs, a drug should be tested for safety and efficacy in double blind randomized clinical trials with appropriate controls and number of participants. If it is OK, than it will get approval from a supervision body (in case of US, the FDA).
The 3 papers did not deal with a clinical trial, one is an in vitro study to look at the mechanism of how GcMAP work, and the other two are open label study without control, so the effect might a placebo effect.
May be there will be proper clinical trials in the future as the prospect is promising, but in my opinion, the safety and efficacy are not yet proven. However, every body can take advantage from a desperate patients longing for cure, and it is unethical to charge the patients. A clinical trial should be free of charge, as the patients are actually experimental subjects.
The same condition also happens for stem cells, it is still in the stage of clinical trials, but many centers offer stem cell therapy with exorbitant prices.
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Paper about widely touted but unapproved “cure” for cancer, autism retracted | Retraction Watch says:
July 25, 2014 at 6:00 AM
[…] has also caught the attention of Jeffrey Beall, who wonders, “Would You Take a Cancer Cure Proven Effective in a Predatory Journal?” Here are some of the claims being made by GcMAF.eu, which sells the […]
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ole ole says:
July 25, 2014 at 8:10 AM
To solidify the case, I think it would be important to list, other than the double address, the exact full list of problems with this publisher and its journals that led it to be listed as a predatory journal. If these aspects are not fully and clearly shown, then the basis of classification as a “predatory” journal may be flawed, and the journal would simply just be another OA journal, like any other.
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Dana Roth says:
July 25, 2014 at 12:58 PM
There is an excellent interview with Jeffrey Beall in the August/September issue of Research Information … that gives the basis for a ‘predatory’ classification … and it is clearly NOT flawed. see:
http://content.yudu.com/A2z1pz/RIAUGSEPT14/resources/4.htmReply
ole ole says:
July 25, 2014 at 4:41 PM
The web-site you provide only indicates an opinion piece by Jeffrey Beall. There is absolutely no quantification of this “predatory” classification. My query pertains specifically to the publisher of this apparently flawed paper, Science Publications. The public needs to know a detailed list of what exactly is wrong with this publisher that would make it “predatory”.
Farid says:
July 26, 2014 at 5:22 PM
I read Mr Beall’s recent interview and I believe his list has helped slow down part of predatory activities, bringing good awareness among scientific society to prevent from bad OA publishers, hijacked journals, etc. However, I do believe good OA publishers, which are also blacklisted by My Beall are growing rapidly and gaining legitimate credit among scientific society. These days, when we search for an OA publisher, Google brings Mr Beall’s insight about the firm right below the search result and scholars as well as legitimate indexing firms can read those contents and make their own judgements. I think Mr Beall has gathered literally all OA publishers appeared within the last 10 years under a single questionable list and very few have been excluded. Therefore, we may think of it as a bias judgement against all OA publishers. I have seen many cases, where an OA publisher listed on his list has managed to receive ISI and Scopus indexes.
In his interview, he argues that some OA publishers may hide their original places and jumps into conclusion that their services are unreliable. I do believe may scholars may develop an OA firm while they are working for a firm and do not want to lose their jobs because of this reason. I don’t see any reason for disclosing all private information over the cyberspace. In addition, these days, it is easy to gather many people from different parts of the world over the cyberspace and manage a web based OA publishing firm. I agree that bad OA publishers do this because they think about money and nothing else but many good quality OA publishers may do this without harming others. What would be wrong if an OA publisher provides good quality papers and rely on subscription fees, only? In such a case, what difference does it make to register an ISSN in United States and work in Germany? As long as the publisher does not want to carry a misleading name like American Journal of business management, it would be no problem I think.
One question Mr Beall raise to bring OA publishers under question was that there would be no subscription for OA products. On the contrary, I think many national libraries think of having hard copies for good quality OA publishers. The papers, which are easily available on an OA website may become unavailable for various reasons such as closing the operation, facing court law, etc. What if a researcher needs a paper published by such OA firm? I have seen some cases where an OA publisher has managed to receive subscription from some libraries. A simple math helps us reach a good conclusion that it would be possible to waive the author fee and publish good quality OA papers and hope to collect subscription fees. I have heard many US libraries support OA publishers whose journals were indexed by ISI. I hope recent OA publishers who wish to stay on business over the long run would also follow this.
Last week, Mr Beall provided us with good news about Life Science journal. I do believe sooner or later, all bad quality journals listed on well-known indexes will lose their credit from those databases and think about doing quality work or running out of business.
In summary, I believe traditional and newly established OA models promote knowledge and if I were in Mr Beall’s shows, I would reconsider my policy of calling them “Predatory publishers”. Just a few years later, many scientific people may come, read Mr Beall’s bias comments and blame him. If Mr Beal is fighting against fraud, any one in scientific community is supporting him, however if he plans to work in favor of well-established publishers and try to kill OA business model, I am afraid, Mr Beall is in wrong direction.
Farid
dzrlib says:
July 26, 2014 at 7:11 PM
In fairness to Mr. Beall, please give some specific examples of “good OA publishers, which are also blacklisted …”
Mike Fainzilber says:
July 27, 2014 at 5:14 AM
“proven effective” is a tall order, requiring the full gamut of clinical trials. I think you meant “claimed to be effective”
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Jeffrey Beall says:
July 27, 2014 at 8:25 AM
Thank you — this is a helpful comment.
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herr doktor bimler says:
July 28, 2014 at 2:08 AM
Have just been reading about the retracted Yamamoto paper over at Retractionwatch. Evidently it was fraudulent through and through, with nonexistent IRBs, purported co-authors who weren’t alive when the research was supposedly happening, and so on. So publication in a non-predatory open-source journal is no guarantee of quality.
It’s an interesting question, how far should peer-review go to check the validity of data? Reviewers generally assume that the authors of a manuscript aren’t actually lying.
As for Ruggiero’s clinics, he sounds pretty shonky… what with his AIDS denialism, and his claims that GcMAF can cure autism (!) as well as all cancers. Non-shonky medics do not feel the need to reassure potential clients that they are a “fully qualified medical doctor”.
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herr doktor bimler says:
July 28, 2014 at 4:15 PM
Further thoughts come to mind on the difficulty of distinguishing between predatory journals and their non-predatory peers that limit themselves to mere grasping commercialism ones…
I was looking at this paper, from January:
http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00934/abstractNote that it was published in a journal from the Frontiers stable… who normally have decent functioning peer review (although in this case publishing a “special issue”). The third author is Ruggiero. The second author, Pacini, is a frequent Ruggiero collaborator — she was co-author of his AIDS-denialism paper that received the unusual honour of being retracted by ‘Medical Hypotheses’ (and I see that she is also the last author of the first GcMAF paper you listed). The first author, Jeff Bradstreet, specialises in experimental treatments for autism, and at various times has proclaimed chelation, “magnetic
resonance therapy”, stem cells, and now GcMAF as the ‘cure’ (Bradstreet has featured regularly at Orac’s Respectful Insolence blog).
This is a case where I suspect that the Frontiers journal failed in its gatekeeping function, despite its non-predatory nature.
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herr doktor bimler says:
July 28, 2014 at 8:42 PM
Update to that last comment:
the paper by Bradstreet et al. in Front. Hum. Neurosci (“A new methodology of viewing extra-axial fluid and cortical abnormalities in children with autism via transcranial ultrasonography”) was followed, a few months later, by a General Commentary Paper by Dario Siniscalco, basically lauding the wonderful groundbreaking nature of Bradstreet’s work.
Under ‘Conflicts of Interest’ Siniscalco states “The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest”. Sadly, he does not bother stating that he was one of the reviewers of the paper he is now praising; nor that he has collaborated with Bradstreet on numerous studies* with commercial applications (i.e. they are part of Bradstreet’s business).
Looking down the Commentary Paper, we find it had four reviewers, of whom three are also regular Siniscalco collaborators (Anna Sapone, Nicola Antonucci and Alessandra Cirillo). Of those three, Dr Sapone added her own COI statement that “despite having collaborated with the authors, the review process was handled objectively”. I don’t know what we can infer from the absence of such a statement from Antonucci and Cirillo.
It is all looking remarkably incestuous, and not a good look for Frontiers.
* “Mesenchymal stem cells in treating autism”; “Therapeutic role of hematopoietic stem cells in autism spectrum disorder-related inflammation”; “Perspectives on the Use of Stem Cells for Autism Treatment”; “The in vitro GcMAF effects on endocannabinoid system transcriptionomics, receptor formation, and cell activity of autism-derived macrophages”
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Fabio Franchi says:
July 28, 2014 at 8:44 AM
The Editor of Journal of Medical Virology was well aware of the problem with Yamamoto in 2009, as I denounced it. I applied also to ORI at that time, but they found an hilarious excuse not to deal with.
The critics about Yamamoto’s paper (not yet retracted) were these:
Here the list (largely incomplete) of “irregularities” found in the paper of Yamamoto published on JMedVir. 81:16–26, 2009.
I. Financial problems
1. The grants mentioned in the study were no more active years before the study began. How were the high costs of the research covered?
II. Ethical problems
1. In the paper you read: “The participants gave written informed consent before entering the study.” But the informed consensus is completely invalid for many reasons (there was no mention – for instance – of alternative approved treatments according to guidelines of the time)
2. In fact, the patients could not give informed consent to protocols because it was written in Japanese (it was translated in English only some months after the publication of the study)!
3. The chairmen of the IRBs admitted indirectly they never received the signed Japanese forms back from the patients (they said they ignored where the patients were)
4. The chairmen of IRBs (asked to answer) do not even mention that the cure has been sent to patients to carry out this study. They write: “Physicians from Southeast Asia and African countries requested for supply of GcMAF for treatment of HIV patients and patients are living in various locations in those countries.”
5. The IRBs were not registered anywhere (checked by me and admitted by the Author himself, at last)
6. Some members of the IRBs were good friends of Yamamoto (they were co-Author in other similar publications, including the two chairmen of IRBs). One (Koga) is co-Author of the same paper he approved on JMedVir.
7. The patients have not been followed in specialized hospital wards or Medical Clinic (IRBs’s chairmen: “We believe that every patient is treated by own physicians and not in recognizable hospitals”. That’s strange indeed: HIV patients are almost exclusively followed by specialists in western Countries and Third world Countries alike and refer to high level labs.
III. Phantom patients?
1. After Yamamoto failed to find the only patient in USA (according to his own words), he stated that the others were “from Southeast Asia countries and South African” in one occasion, but referred to “Asian and South African subjects” in another. The chairmen of the IRBs used the expression: “Physicians from Southeast Asia and African countries”, completing the mixing among continents, sub regions, African countries and a nation (South Africa). So even the approximate “locations” of the mysterious patients is not clear, nor the location of the labs where the exams have been performed.
IV. Damn statistics
1. The results of this study are perfect: all the 15 patients have been cured (their HIV has been “eradicated”), all the markers values are what could be desired at best. The “right” results have been obtained in 100% of essays. For instance there is an optimum inverse correlation between CD4 and Viral Load, while in the scientific literature it is widely known this optimum inverse correlation does not exist.
2. The “precursor activity” found in the 15 patients was reduced in all, while Yamamoto’s patent on nagalase, the test forecasts that 65% of HIV patients have not a reduction of it.
… and much more.
dr. Fabio Franchi
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herr doktor bimler says:
July 28, 2014 at 2:56 PM
Ah, so this is another Yamamoto paper, this time claiming that GcMAF cures AIDS. And I see from their sites that the industry’s promoters claim that GcMAF is produced by all viri, so ‘nagalase’ is a marker of any viral disease. And as you note, GcMAF cures Chronic Fatigue Syndrome… and here’s Ruggiero’s colleague Bradstreet, claiming that GcMAF ‘cures’ autism.
That linked publication, incidentally, is through a publishing house called ‘Libertas Academica’ (currently boasting 35 new journals). They’re not in your list and I wondered if you’ve looked into them.
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Fabio Franchi says:
July 28, 2014 at 8:46 AM
Please change my icon!
Reply
Human Brain Project con yogurt | OggiScienza says:
August 1, 2014 at 7:08 AM
[…] vede innanzitutto che Immuno Biotech non pubblica nulla. Due articoli usciti su riviste predatorie riportano risultati clinici ottenuti in USA da un’altra società, per così dire, e il […]
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Andy says:
October 19, 2014 at 5:27 AM
OMICS has recently high jacked a fast growing African medical journal with the complicity of another Predatory publisher – Ashdin. The Journal “Clinics in Mother and Child Health” was a renown medical journal publishing in Mother and Child health issues and edited from a Central African country – Cameroon.
When you look at the Editorial now it is a big shame that these guys culled people’s pics from the web and grouped them under the banner “The Editorial Board”.
I don’t know where this OMICS is found in this planet, and why they do all these unethical, dishonest disgusted practices and still go unpunished by the scientific community.
Please Jeffrey check and confirm the high jacking of this journal!!!
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Jeffrey Beall says:
October 19, 2014 at 8:18 AM
Actually, this is not a case of journal hijacking. OMICS purchased the journal from its previous publisher.
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WDDTY uncritically promotes GcMAF, AIDS denialism says:
November 30, 2014 at 11:20 AM
[…] GcMAF is marketed illegally with purported support from subsequent publications in low impact and predatory (pay-to-play) journals. Numerous organisations have warned over these illegal claims. Cancer Research UK describes GcMAF […]
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Clem Jackson says:
February 25, 2015 at 3:29 AM
I can appreciate the comments and opinions above in this blog. The one point I have not seen mentioned is the effect any cure of any disease would have on the vast profit drug companies make.How are we sure the comments on this blog are genuine and not based on vested interest. Lets look at the cancer research uk discussion on this drug GCmaf and the interesting point is that they claim to be so passionate about wanting to cure cancer but not once do they offer to run a complete trial on Gcmaf, which would of course eliminate all doubt and conjecture. Why do they and other drug companies adopt the same attitude. I believe the reason is simply, money and wealth. If a cure for cancer was discovered the drug companies would lose billions and cancer research would be broke over night. The main aim of the drug companies is to treat people not cure them. I would like to tell you a story of a very capable Dr who worked for a laboratory working on cancer cures funded by cancer research uk. This chap and his wife stayed at my band b each year. The last year he stayed with us he was depressed and confused. He told me he had discovered a cure for a certain type of cancer but could not get funding to go to clinical trials. Make of it what you will but I would imagine that cancer research is a vastly wealthy company and where money is concerned morals often float out the window.
So lets lobby all these sceptical bodies to do an open clinical trial on the claims surrounding GCmaf. That is of course you do not believe they have already done it and are using there attacks to discredit the inventors of such a cure.
With regards to the original question on whether you would take an unlicenced drug the answer is simple. If you are facing a death sentence and the NHS can do no more for you, you will try anything.
Regards
Clem
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Mrs J Salazar says:
February 25, 2015 at 5:32 AM
I think the above has a very valid point – why would any of these pharmaceutical companies want to find a cure for cancer ?? Its like manna from heaven – endless money – endless drugs, endless uncertainty for the patient, endless fear and endless dependence and the list goes on……why doesn’t the Cancer Research UK do trials, they have the money. I am waiting for an answer from someone who can tell me why…………………………………….
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Jeff says:
August 18, 2015 at 7:00 AM
Hear hear. Put up or shut up. Pretty quick to shoot it down…..without due diligent scientific OPEN research? Hmmmmm
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Cathy says:
March 19, 2015 at 6:15 PM
Hi Mr. Beall, an update to this blog post is that the Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency in the UK has stopped production at the Guernsey facility making GcMAF because of concerns about the production facility and source material. I quote from the MHRA press release of 3 Feb 2015: “The blood plasma starting material being used to make this drug stated “Not to be administered to humans or used in any drug products.” I am sympathetic to the recent views posted above but their timing is interesting.
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zena warrior princess says:
January 2, 2016 at 5:14 AM
‘Apparently, some of the same people who are researching the drug also are involved in marketing and selling it.’
I find this a highly amusing comment considering that the pharmaceutical industry has links to all things medical. Of course they would never manipulate clinical trials, offer financial incentives or even downright lie about results.
Why is it that some ‘clinicians’ take the high ground when some new ‘more natural’ substance might be useful and yet happily prescribe drugs where in the list of possible ‘side effects’ includes ‘danger of death’.
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Fabio says:
January 3, 2016 at 4:52 AM
The comment of Zena Warrior Princess is well focused.
The big problem is not the way GcMAF has been introduced and sold to patients … and not even (the big problem) is the fraudulent research of Yamamoto & Co (three papers have been retracted and one officially found full of “inconsistencies”).
In my opinion this is only a good paradigmatic case on how control in science publication works, I mean doesn’t work. Let put apart the weakness of (double) peer reviews. When I first reported that there were frauds in the papers to the directors of the journals, in 2009, they answered me that they could do nothing and there was no prove of fraud (but there was a lot of). An intense exchange of e-mails ended in a stalemate .
I wrote also to ORI (the Office of Research Integrity) in 2009, which answered me in a way that it can be defined a comic masterpiece. In a few words, it was not their competence even if it was (by their own protocol).
Things changed when a further analysis has been made by a group of researchers (who contacted me in 2013 and you mentioned) who succeeded in finding other proves of fraud and obtained the results with the papers of Yamamoto on the cure of cancers.
The paper on HIV positive people was still there, but the director of J Med Vir refused to reconsider.
Then I asked to COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) to ascertain what I found (not less than invented data, invented patients, invented results). They did NOTHING, except exchanging many formal standardized letters with me and wait. They never examined and discussed the issues. I have found that they were good friends with the Director of the Journal. It was far from being a fair trial.
At last the HIV paper has been retracted for some formal “irregularities” about Ethical Committees. This formula evidently saved every culprit.
Yamamoto is Author of dozens of papers about GcMAF that should be retracted too, but nobody cares of them. Prof Marco Ruggiero and his wife dott. Pacini were well aware of Yamamoto frauds when they were supporting Yamamoto findings, because I have told them as far back as in 2009.
In conclusion, the single whistle blower finds a rubber wall, instead of being appreciated for his worthy and obscure work. The directors of the papers I contacted were well aware of the “gems of research” they published, but tried to remain silent about the story and made me lose a lot of time and efforts. The same has been made – and this is very serious – by the Agencies which should control. Only when the action was unavoidable, they decided for … a minimal lumpectomy. It is not strange to think that this behavior is not restricted to the few cases I mentioned, but it’s a method of work. How many camels are we continuously swallowing while reading “scientific journals”?
Fabio Franchi – Trieste (Italy)
MD. Specialist in Clinics of Infectious Diseases
PS I have all the documents about what I wrote
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Andy says:
January 4, 2016 at 12:41 PM
Dear Prof Beall;
Please advice me on what this means and what I should do with it.
I received this in my mail:
« Are you the author of work entitled « …………………………»?
It was apparently written at the ………………………. Journal in 2014.
I’m Erin Lane from the editorial team of Lambert Academic Publishing.
I believe this particular topic could be of interest to a wider audience and we would be glad to consider publishing it.
We would be especially interested in publishing a complete academic work of yours (a thesis, a dissertation or a monograph) as a printed book. Our services are free of charge for authors.
Andy—-, would you agree to receive more information in an electronic brochure?
Thank you in advance.
Sincere regards,
Erin Lane
Acquisition Editor
e: e.lane@lap-publishing.com
w:
http://www.lap-publishing.comReply
Jeffrey Beall says:
January 4, 2016 at 4:10 PM
This is a company that wants you to sign over some or all of the rights to your work so they can sell it on Amazon and other similar sites. It’s not illegal, but few authors ever see any benefit from this, and for many it’s not a good choice.
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Kevin Foohey Sr says:
January 25, 2016 at 11:10 AM
Sir/Madam: I appreciate your discussion on this topic. Yet I disagree with the premise of your insinuated theme; do not trust this stuff. You conflate matters as it relates to the true issues. Calling Gc-MAF a medicine … not at this time. Along with letting the uninformed reader to think European, Asian and Western approaches to medicine and medical treatments are of the same philosophy. No they are not. Regarding The Western approach, if a potential med has not gone through xyz trials then it is garbage. Prior to the tangential influences of Pharmaceutical companies co-mingling with the big business end of hospitals and specialty treatment centers, most medicines were developed via proven homeopathic venues. Ex: Why did milkmaids in the 1800’s not fall prey to small pox? Due to there exposure to either a protein or a enzyme in cows milk. Which was developed into a vaccine from the antibodies in the atenuated pustules they had. Practically eliminating the disease.
European & Asian approaches to medicine not only embrace the Western approach to treatments, they also incorporate holistic approaches , holistic medicines as well, in the treatment of their patients. It is from many of these holistic medicines that most western medicines are eventually developed. It’s just sad that in modern times the conjoined Western Medical and Pharmaceutical industry habits are to down play the effectiveness of the holistic approach simply because they cannot place a patent on it and make billions. Or because the effectiveness of a holistic medicine or supplement were to be known to the common patient, their medical pharmaceutical empires may crumble, dissipate, and disappear. A lesson learned from the development and cure of the Small Pox inoculation.
In other words if the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine were to include the scientific papers of the developers of Gc-MAF may lend a greater credence to its cause. It may lead to the use of Gc-MAF as a very effective co-treatment to cancer. A treatment so effective that it may constrain or eliminate the profits of the multi-billion dollar (US) Cancer Industry.
Thus you defame the effectiveness of the medication supplement in its 70 plus clinical trials. Up to 85% effective in treating certain classifications of cancer.
Would you deny the filmed documented action Gc-MAF has had on the degradation of cancer in its laboratory trials? Woulid you deny the fact that Gc-MAF is present in our bodies at birth to battle against bacteria and virons. That as this GC-MAF lessen with age, or chemo, or proton therapies, that other pre- cancerious, pre-bacterial, and pre- viral degrading enzymes turn off Gc-MAF factors so the disease they promote can over take and weaken a patients body? Gc-MAF which can be obtained in serum and suppository form occurs in nature. Therefore you cannot slap patient on it. The process that Dr Yamamoto, a world renown Bio- chemist, developed to create a stable form of Gc-MAF, it patented. Therefore if allowed to become known to the world you might have to share the profits with him and Dr Marco Ruggiero from Italy.
Personally, I look forward to the demise of the multi billion dollar cancer industry, as a world without cancer needless killing patients in order to maintain profit margins is a good world.
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Kevin Foohey Sr says:
January 25, 2016 at 11:19 AM
Again your primary concern appears to be that a co-cancer treatment will only cost a few hundred or a few thousand dollars US. That is why you hope to keep it in the realm of “supplements” and available to everyone in its yogurt form, from exclusive authorized dealers via the internet. Google Dr Marco Ruggiero and search on Bravo.eu , or Bravo.asia if you desire the yogurt or further scientific information.
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