Latest The Lancet Stories

By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - A disgraced Norwegian doctor has admitted faking data for two articles about cancer of the mouth in leading medical journals in addition to one already exposed as a fabrication, his lawyer said on Monday. "There were three articles in which the basic material was not correctly handled," Erling Lyngtveit told NRK public radio of work by Jon Sudbo, a cancer expert at Norway's Radium Hospital. He said Sudbo had admitted making up data for an article in...

OSLO (Reuters) - Health authorities opened a probe of a Norwegian cancer researcher on Wednesday after his hospital accused him of falsifying data for an article published in a leading medical journal.The investigation, ordered by the medical officer for the Oslo region, would cover cancer specialist Jon Sudbo and Oslo's Radium Hospital where he worked. Sudbo, 44, is on sick leave and has not commented on the charges that he faked data."We welcome this decision," Stein Vaaler, a...

By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - Norway promised on Monday to speed up a new law that may bring jail terms for medical cheats after a hospital accused one of its cancer researchers of falsifying data published in a leading journal. "There must be no doubt about the quality of our research," Health Minister Sylvia Brustad told Norway's NTB news agency. "So we are speeding up our draft law." The government would present the law to parliament later this year, earlier than planned, after...

OSLO (Reuters) - A Norwegian cancer expert made up fictitious patients for an article about treatment of oral cancer published in a leading medical journal, the hospital said on Sunday. "The material was fabricated," said Trine Lind, spokeswoman of the Norwegian Radium Hospital where Jon Sudbo has worked as a doctor and a researcher. "We are shocked. This is the worst thing that could happen in a research institution like ours." Sudbo, 44, invented patients and case histories for a...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The clinical benefits attributed to homeopathic treatment are merely placebo effects, according to the authors of a report in The Lancet medical journal. Homeopathy is based on the notion that "like cures like," and treatment involves giving a patient small amounts of drugs that, in larger quantities, cause symptoms like those suffered by the patient. It also involves a great deal of interaction between the practitioner and the patient. In the current...

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Contrary to what the "hygiene hypothesis" suggests, the youngest children in a family are not less likely than older siblings to develop multiple sclerosis (MS), new research suggests. According to the hygiene hypothesis, being too clean is not a good thing. Infections at an early age actually trains the immune system to respond appropriately to the environment, and this protects kids against certain diseases like asthma and MS, so the argument goes. Having...