Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17039

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Gornall J
A very public break-up
BMJ 2010 Jan 18;
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/340/jan18_1/c110

Abstract:

With hindsight, it is easy to see the email sent by NMT Medical’s Geoff Fournie in August 2004 as a prophetic moment in the story of the highly public collapse of the relationship between the Boston medical devices company and British cardiologist Peter Wilmshurst.

Mr Fournie, vice president of clinical development for Europe, was writing to Len Doyal, the ethical adviser of NMT’s then embryonic trial, Migraine Intervention with STARFlex Technology (MIST), investigating whether closure of patent foramen ovales with the company’s septal repair implant might cure migraine. Not only was Dr Wilmshurst “the ‘seminal thinker’ in this area,” he wrote, he was also “recognized as an ‘ethical physician.’”

Conceived as a randomised, double blind, placebo controlled study in which control patients would have a general anaesthetic and sham procedure, the trial was ethically pioneering, and Mr Fournie was keen to stress Dr Wilmshurst’s credentials as a member of its . . .