Professor fabricated research on pill

Press, 30 March 1987, Page 1

Professor fabricated research on pill

NZPA-AAP London A six-month inquiry by Deaken University, in Geelong, has confirmed that one of its former academics, Professor Michael Briggs, faked trials, methods and papers which indicated the safety of a contraceptive pill, the “Sunday Times” reported yesterday. Professor Briggs was bom in Britain and died in Spain late last year, two months after the newspaper’s “Insight” team of reporters confronted him with evidence — subsequently published — that he had fabricated his research. The “research” was used by two of his financial backers, Schering AG, of West Berlin, and Wyeth Laboratories, of Pennsylvania, to encourage doctors to prescribe the Logynon and Trinordiol brands of contraceptive pills, which are used by more than two million women. The “Sunday Times”

said that last week-end Deaken University released a report on Professor Briggs, former head of its science department and a world authority on the pill. The newspaper said the university’s inquiry found Professor Briggs did not do any of the research in Australia that he claimed. The paper said findings of the six-month inquiry included:

That the methods cited in Professor Briggs’ scientific papers on the pill could not have produced the results he claimed. The inquiry concluded that “the results reported in a number of these publications could have only been obtained by fabrication.”

Professor Briggs did not have a personal laboratory to perform his alleged research, and he was never seen to do experiments. Nevertheless, he published influential scientific papers on the pill’s side-effects,

which he claimed to have produced at the university between 1976 and 1984. The low-dose “triphasic” pill was portrayed as the least likely to produce risks of heart disease and other serious illnesses associated with the pill. Schering AG and Wyeth have since deleted all reference to his work from their literature.

The “Sunday Times” said Dr Bryan Hudson, a leading authority on the pill, who gave evidence to the inquiry, claimed the companies appeared uninterested in how Professor Briggs produced his findings.

“It raises big questions about the relationship between a research person and drug companies, and about the ethics of a drug company supporting research,” Dr Hudson said.

Spokesmen for both Schering and Wyeth were quoted as saying they had no knowledge of Professor Briggs’ deceptions.