http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/wat...211874181.html

Two independent reports issued Monday found Medtronic's spine surgery product known as Infuse offered little benefit over conventional spine surgery and may be linked to serious harms including cancer and a complication that can cause sterility in men.

The twist: This time the critical reviews were funded by Medtronic itself.

In 2011, the company agreed to allow Yale University to oversee the new studies after concerns identified by other independent researchers, a probe by a U.S. Senate Committee and investigative reports in the Journal Sentinel dating to 2009...


Eugene Carragee, editor in chief of the Spine Journal, which published its own critical review of BMP-2 in 2011, said early on there was an unwarranted carnival-like enthusiasm for the product.

The result, he said, was billions of dollars in extra medical costs and the increased risk of serious complications.

"The take home message from this debacle...is that the public needs better safeguards against conflicted and tainted medical research," he said.
That means medical journals should have complete access to data and get unbiased presentations from authors, said Carragee, head of spine surgery at Stanford University.

"Unless we remain vigilant, medical publications will continue to devolve into information-laundering machines and clinical studies become infomercials for their corporate sponsors," he said.