What knocked me over was one of the worst show trials in academic history
By Peter C Gøtzsche
Translation of my article in the newspaper Politiken 2024;Dec 2
In the Danish newspaper Politiken (25 Nov), Lars Igum Rasmussen brought a comprehensive portrait of me because of my 75th birthday the next day. Most of the article is laudatory, but already in the headline Lars Igum gets it wrong: “Peter Gøtzsche was one of the greatest. Until his manners knocked him off the throne.”
What knocked me over was one of the worst show trials in academic history, which I have written two books and also an article in Politiken about: “My dismissal is a scientific judicial murder” (11 Dec 2018). I was elected to Cochrane’s Governing Board with the largest number of votes to change Cochrane’s disastrous course, but it became too much of a threat to Cochrane’s CEO, who, by the way, suddenly disappeared without any explanation in the middle of a month after he had destroyed Cochrane.
Cochrane’s management did not challenge my professionalism, and the lawyer they hired to scrutinise my work found nothing to fault me for, not even regarding my so-called manners. In other words, it was a purely political process, which was about the CEO wanting to maintain his unlimited power at all costs.
When I was excluded from Cochrane, head of cabinet Per Okkels in the Ministry of Health decided that I should be fired from my job at Rigshospitalet, thereby automatically losing my professorship as well. It was convenient for him that the biggest critic of the Danish Medicines Agency, the Danish Board of Health and the pharmaceutical industry was now a thing of the past, and although several politicians in Parliament tried to prevent my dismissal, it happened. There was no professional justification for it, yet again it was about politics.
Contrary to what Lars Igum writes, it is my impression that my professional reputation has not suffered any damage but is unchanged. It is decidedly preposterous to claim that my book, “Deadly medicines and organised crime”, should have caused my professional star to fade. On the contrary, the book won first prize in the British Medical Association and has been published in 18 languages.
It is also nonsense that my support is now found in “health sectarian environments”, among critics of psychiatry and vaccines. My support is unchanged among my scientific colleagues, and I am of course not against vaccines, but am in favour of honest information.
When there is nothing wrong with my science, I of course have to be “squeamish.” Lars Igum has to write something. So, when he ends by saying that we need a credible, less shrill voice that can speak out against Big Pharma with weight and authority, I would like to end by saying that I am still here and very active, see my Institute for Scientific Freedom.