The Chemotherapy scam

Something is very wrong:  Where is the oversite structure to protect patients from unneeded treatments?  Why isn’t there a reward system for whistle blowers?  Answer is simple:  our corporatist state is against effective regulations that affect corporate profits.  We went from managed Keynesian capitalism to laissez fare capitalism.  Above is a story of a rogue doctor, while unreported is the broken corporate system on a grand scale treating people with drugs that shorten lives based upon tobacco science and their guidelines. This charade on a grand scale of serving patients is within the law, and beyond the talking points of corporate media.  Muckrakers such as Harvard Professor Marcia Angell and are simply ignored—Angell on bad pharma.  Corporate media won’t offend it advertiser. 

Dr. Fata went beyond pharma generated guidelines and was prosecuted.  But what about the guidelines calling for treatments that harm patients?  For example, pointless use of chemotherapy is the norm, for terminal patients, and for those with early stage cancer.  Shrinking a tumor in a terminal patient for a few weeks is not a cure. If a chemo-therapy can’t cure, but only extend life a month or 2, then it shouldn’t be given.  There is no evidence that this same chemotherapy given an early stage say, stages 1 & 2 breast cancer actually prevents metastatic cancer.  It must be able to destroy the tumor, and most chemo therapies can’t.  We need endpoint proof of a lower rate of metastatic breast cancer in the chemotherapy group, and that proof must be generated by an independent study, not one funded by pharma, designed by pharma and ran by their KOLs (key opinion leaders) or a pro-pharma organization.  Patients are sold on survival as though it meant a higher percentage won’t die of that cancer, while in fact it means that the terminal treated group lives just 2-months longer.  I wouldn’t choose if I had terminal cancer to poison myself with chemo for 2 months of life, nor would I chose to have a significant chance of having my health destroy and life shortened by chemotherapy when I was in the group that doesn’t have metastatic cancer.  I would choose it if it was shown in a scientific independent study not influenced by pharma and their friends that those with early stage cancers had a significant lower percentage of developing metastatic cancer.   And equally important it must be shown that the based on all causes of death the treated group with stage 1, 2, or 3 cancer lives longer.  It is not a benefit if a few less in the treated group dies from cancer, yet die at an overall higher rate from other causes when compared to the placebo group.  Patients are being misinformed by oncologist about the risks and benefits.  That is what Dr. Fata did, but he crossed the low hurdle to treat patients without cancer. 

This brings up another point:  it is in the financial interest for the company which reads biopsy to call abnormal cells cancer.  Thus at least 25% of benign breast tumors are labeled adenocarcinomas and treated aggressively—the same for prostate cancer, and other types.  That is why the mammogram and PSA test were deemed to cause more harm than good.  To understand the harm done by this you must come to understand that both testosterone and estradiol are life extending drugs, which pharma through their tobacco science opposes.  Blocking the sex hormones promotes chronic conditions that shorten life several years.  Click on links for the evidence--jk. 

A case of when a doctor blatantly violates cancer treatment guidelines.  Dr. Fata treated patients who didn’t need chemotherapy, including a few who didn’t have cancer, many who were near death, and other examples of profits before patients.   

Dr. Farid Fata, charged August 6, 2013 for Medicare fraud.  Over 2 years he billed Medicare $35 million for cancer treatments of which a number of patients didn’t have cancer, others were in remission or received in appropriate treatments such as for a compromised immune system when it wasn’t compromised.  A number of patients died, others have permanent conditions from the treatments.  Dr. Farid Fata is a KOL (key opinion leader) who co-authored on 20 journal articles.  He graduated in 2005 whose specialty training was at the Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center.  He has clinics in 7 locations with 60 employees.  The Federal complaint in this case indicates that employees were aware of the bogus treatments.   The Medscape article:   “The current and former employees paint a picture of a physician who was obsessed with administering chemotherapy, no matter the circumstances… Dr. Fata incorporated a company called United Diagnostics in November 2012. “According to a business office employee interviewed by federal agents, all the PET scans ordered by Dr. Fata were performed at United Diagnostics. One nurse practitioner (NP) told federal agents that she pulled the charts for 40 patients scheduled for IVIG therapy and saw that 38 had neither low antibody levels nor a recurrent infection, which is another indication for the treatment. The NP consulted 2 other employees about the issue, and the 3 of them canceled the IVIG therapy for the 38 patients.  . Dr. Fata's employees had internally challenged other practices they considered unethical, such as fabricating cancer diagnoses in patient records to justify insurance claims for chemotherapy and positron emission tomography (PET) scans, according to interviews conducted by federal agents. Some employees quit over these issues.  Another employee said that the percentage of Dr. Fata's patients who received PET scans increased from 30% to 70% once United Diagnostics opened for business. Likewise, Dr. Fata started a pharmacy in 2012, and he instructed MHO employees to make it their sole source for oral chemotherapy drugs… One employee said Dr. Fata saw 30 to 60 patients per day. Three other employees put the count at 50 to 70. Several said that Dr. Fata could sustain this pace because he used unlicensed foreign physicians to conduct examinations that typically lasted several hours. Then Dr. Fata would pop in at the end.”   Though he is a citizen of Lebanon,  with access that exceed $40,000,000, and who faces a possible long sentence since patients without cancer died from the chemotherapy, he was released on $170,000 bail. 

In 2010, Fata diagnosed Sobieray with a rare blood cancer and subjected him to monthly infusions of chemotherapy and three weeks of radiation — expensive treatments that he said made his teeth fall out and his body twitched uncontrollably.  After Fata was arrested in 2013 and charged in what a prosecutor said was the "most egregious" case of health-care fraud in U.S. history, Sobieray went to a different oncologist and learned that he'd never even had cancer. While Fata told healthy patients they were sick, he sold false hope to the terminally ill in an effort to convince them to keep buying treatments that would not extend their lives, authorities charged.  

Federal prosecutors are seeking a 175-year sentence for Fata, who pleaded guilty to fraud in September, admitting he raked in millions from insurance companies for needless treatments at seven clinics in eastern Michigan…. The breadth of Fata's misdeeds was laid bare last month in a sentencing memo from prosecutors, who revealed for the first time that a total of 553 people allegedly got unnecessary treatment — amounting to 9,000 injections or infusions that cost insurance companies and patients millions.” NBC News, July 7, 2914.   

Though the American corporate press and the prosecutor call the police response prompt, it wasn’t.  Oncology nurse Angela Swantek says she complained to investigators about Fata in 2010.