To the L A Times Health Section:

The May 9 Health Section article "Doctor takes risk with drug trial tampering" discusses the most vital aspect of medical science research. That aspect is absolute honesty. The most important element of medical research is the "double blind" study. Double blind requires that neither the doctors or the patients are aware of who is getting a placebo or who is getting the actual medicine. A breach of that procedure invalidates the study.
I'm certain that there are medicines on the market today where faulted or inaccurate studies have qualified them as a useful medicine, Indeed, many medicines, previously approved by the Food and Drug Administration, have been removed from the marketplace because they are less effective or more dangerous than the studies demonstrated.
Conclusion: the studies were inaccurate or inadequate. But I suspect that some of them have been tampered with.

Melvin H Kirschner BA BS MPH MD
Dr. Kirschner's book "All Medicines Are Poison!" discusses the health care inequities in the U. S. and offers some solutions