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Duke Concealed Info on Potti's Fraudulent Trials from Patients for Over 2 Years (cancerletter.com)
5 points by mattobh on May 28, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment



Duke recently settled the lawsuits regarding a famous cancer researcher who fudged his data (he had huge grants, millions in capital venture investments, and now most of his papers are withdrawn and the university is facing a federal research misconduct investigation). Now the patients are free to talk:

Joyce Shoffner, one of the two living plaintiffs said Duke did not inform her of the ongoing problems at the time until the trials were canceled November 2010, over two years after she joined the breast cancer trial. Even when she was notified of the cancelations, Duke did not come clean on the truth behind the data, and she only learned about the fraud via Google.

Breast cancer experts reviewed her treatment in this article and said she did not receive the standard of care at the time: Shoffner's oncologist at Duke, Marcom, relied on the genomic predictors to deny her a class of drugs experts say should have been given to a patient like her. Her oncologist never discussed that option with her -- which the trial protocol allowed -- and never discussed the risk and benefit with her, apparently a standard procedure in a scenario like Shoffner's.

The patient was diagnosed with PTSD as a result of her "devastating" experience with Duke, an institution she was affiliated with for over 40 years.




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