Shutdown of Denmark

After a few weeks of trying to contain the COVID-19 through placing people in quarantine, the Danish government took much more drastic measures the last couple of days.

  • New time-limited emergency laws have been put in place, allowing:
    • The closing of schools and other institutes of learning, as well as public institutions in general
    • Forcing people into isolation if they have a dangerous disease
    • Allowing police to force their way into homes without a court order, if the Ministry of Health asks them to do so
    • Prohibiting events over a certain size
    • To put aside certain laws guaranteeing treatments for certain ailments within a certain time frame
    • Make it possible to limit access to public transportation, hospitals, and nursery homes
    • Create protective measures that guarantees delivery of goods
  • All public schools, high schools and places of higher education is shut down for two weeks from tomorrow (most closed down today)
  • All public cultural institutions (e.g. museums), libraries etc are closed down for two weeks
  • All state employees working in non-critical roles are sent home with pay for the next two weeks. If they can work from home, they should do so, otherwise they will get a paid leave.
  • Courts have closed down for the next two weeks, except in exceptional situations
  • The travel from certain places (Italy, Iran, China, parts of South Korea, different parts of Europe) are restricted, in the sense that you are forced to a mandatory examination
  • The government has asked for all events with more than 100 people to cancel the next two weeks
  • The government has suggested that cafe, restaurants, and bars consider closing down the next two weeks
  • The government has asked everybody to try to limit their travel on public transportation, especially during peak hours
  • The government has suggested that all private schools, high schools, and institutes of learning close down the next couple of weeks
  • The government has asked all private employers to get their employees to work from home or use their vacation if possible
  • The government has suggested that private religious congregations, museums etc close down for the next two weeks

As you can see, the actions taken are quite far-reaching, and affect most Danes. Personally, I will be working from home the next two weeks, communication with colleagues via the internet. For a lot of introverts, this probably sounds fantastic, for me, as an extrovert, it is not something I look forward to.

I am not too happy about the temporary law allowing the police to force their way into homes without a court order on behalf of the Ministry of Health, but I guess I can see the need for it under certain circumstances. If it is misused, the police and/or the Ministry of Health can be dragged in front of a court (unlike in some countries, people actually occasionally win over the state in Denmark).

The reason the Danish government is taking these actions, is because the spread of the virus was getting out of control, and because the Italian health minister warned Denmark that they needed to take drastic actions to avoid getting into a similar situations as Italy.

The measures taken is an attempt to both try to limit the spreading of the disease and to protect the most vulnerable. Before this, the idea was to contain the virus through asking people to go into quarantine – this clearly didn’t work, as the spread has more than doubled every day this week.

Generally, the steps taken by the government are widely supported, though a large minority believe that the whole threat is overblown. None of the later group appears to be working in health care or similar.

For more coverage, see The Local which has made the article free to read.

European scientific or health personnel, please sign this manifesto

The Association to Protect the Sick of Pseudoscientific Therapies from Spain, and several other European organizations have gotten together to write a European manifesto against pseudo-therapies

It says, in part:

European directive 2001/83/CE has made –and still makes— possible the daily deceiving of thousands of hundreds of European citizens [10]. Influential lobbies have been given the opportunity to redefine what a medicine is, and now they are selling sugar to sick people and making them believe it can cure them or improve their health. This has caused deaths and will continue to do so until Europe admits an undeniable truth: scientific knowledge cannot yield under economic interests, especially when it means deceiving patients and violating their rights.

Europe is facing very serious problems regarding public health. Over-medicalization, multiresistant bacteria or the financial issues of the public systems are already grave enough, and there is no need to add to that gurus, fake doctors or even qualified doctors who claim they can cure any disease by manipulating chakras, making people eat sugar or employing “quantic frequencies”. Europe must not only stop the promotion of homeopathy but also actively fight to eradicate public health scams, which implicate more than 150 pseudo-therapies in our territory. Thousands of citizens lives depend on that. In fact, according to recent research, 25.9 % of Europeans have used pseudo-therapies last year. In other words, 192 million patients have been deceived [11].

…

Europe being concerned about the misinformation phenomena but at the same time protecting one the most dangerous types of it, health misinformation, is just not coherent. This is why the people signing this manifesto urge the governments of European countries to end a problem in which the name of science is being used falsely and has already costed the life of too many.

I do not fulfill the criteria for signing the manifesto, but I fully endorse it, and hope that any readers out there, who fulfill the criteria, will read the manifesto in full, and sign it.

It is about time that we got rid of pseudo-science in our health care in Europe.

Problems in Chinese clinical trials

I came across this story some weeks ago, and have been wondering why it hasn’t received more widespread coverage in the science-sphere and in the news.

80% of data in Chinese clinical trials have been fabricated

A Chinese government investigation has revealed that more than 80 percent of the data used in clinical trials of new pharmaceutical drugs have been “fabricated“.

The report uncovered fraudulent behaviour at almost every level, and showed that some pharmaceutical companies had hidden or deleted records of potentially adverse side effects, and tampered with data that didn’t meet their desired outcomes.

In light of the findings, 80 percent of current drug applications, which were awaiting approval for mass production, have now been cancelled.

The investigation, led by the Chinese State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), looked at data from 1,622 clinical trials for new pharmaceutical drugs currently awaiting approval. The applications in question were all for Western medicine, not traditional Chinese medicine.

The SFDA found that the more than 80 percent of the data failed to meet analysis requirements, were incomplete, or totally non-existent.

The lack of general coverage worried me, as this seems like a major story, so I decided to try to dig deeper into the story before writing about it.

This proved to be wise, as the first reports wasn’t as complete as one could have wished.

CFDA: reports of clinical trial data fraud ‘not fact based’

The Chinese Food and Drug Administration (CDFA) has fired back on lack of context in media reporting “80% of China’s clinical trial data are fraudulent.”

According to this article, most of the trials were voluntarily withdrawn during a self-examination process, and were thus not found to be fraudulent by the CFDA. Another article adds a bit more details:

Asia Regulatory Roundup: CFDA Investigates Trial Sites Over Data Integrity

China’s Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) has opened investigations into 11 clinical trial sites and contract research organizations (CROs) as part of a data verification drive initiated last year. The regulator suspects the sites and CROs generated fraudulent clinical trial data to support 27 new drug applications.

CFDA released details of the investigations as part of a breakdown of the numbers associated with the self-audit of drug applications by organizations seeking approval in China. Of the 1,622 applicants asked to carry out the self-examination in July 2015, 1,193 organizations withdrew their submissions voluntarily after receiving the regulator’s request. CFDA allowed applicants to withdraw their filings without facing punishment. As 193 of the applicants were exempt from clinical trials, the withdrawals amount to 83% of all the submissions that went through the self-audit.

The regulator is seeking to dispel reports all of the applications were withdrawn because their data were fraudulent. While CFDA acknowledges some of the applications included false data, deliberately or by mistake, others were withdrawn because of more prosaic failings. Some of the withdrawals were triggered by recognition of failures to comply with good clinical practices (GCPs). Others were a result of the clinical trial data falling short of what is needed to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of a medicine

So, it seems like it is overstating it to claim that over 80% of all Chinese clinical trials contained fraudulent data.

It does, however, seem like one could make the claim that there have been found widespread problems with the data in Chinese trials – either through self-examination or through official data verification – otherwise, why would so many results be voluntary withdrawn?

I am happy to see that the Chinese authorities are following up with investigations into clinical trial sites and contract research organizations.