As many of you now know, Peter Gøtzsche was recently expelled from the Cochrane Collaboration. I was going to write a blog on it, but Maryanne Demasi has already written an excellent blog which covers most of what I was going to say. I would recommend that everyone reads it.1

I would simply add that, when an organisation that I had a lot of time for, the organisation now known as Cochrane, which used to be the Cochrane Collaboration, loses its way, one wonders if the lamps truly are turning out across the world. Perhaps never to be turned on again.

President Dwight Eisenhower made this warning to the world in 1961:

On Jan. 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower gave the nation a dire warning about what he described as a threat to democratic government. He called it the military-industrial complex, a formidable union of defense contractors and the armed forces.

Eisenhower, a retired five-star Army general, the man who led the allies on D-Day, made the remarks in his farewell speech from the White House.

As NPR's Tom Bowman tells Morning Edition co-host Renee Montagne, Eisenhower used the speech to warn about "the immense military establishment" that had joined with "a large arms industry."

Here's an excerpt:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist." 2

Had Eisenhower been alive today, I am certain that he would have recognised another player had joined the party. The ‘pharmaceutical/medical device industry complex.’ His warning about ‘the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist,’ is equally valid today.

In fact, it is not a ‘potential.’ It has happened.

‘The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.’ Edward Gray.

1: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmjebmspotlight/2018/09/16/cochrane-a-sinking...

2: https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-military-e...