Dr Aseem Malhotra
© Charlie Forgham-BaileyDr Aseem Malhotra, consultant cardiologist and leading obesity campaigner, is among several health experts calling for a public inquiry into how drug companies and doctors are putting millions of patients at risk.
Leading British health experts are calling for a Chilcot-style inquiry into why they say tens of thousands of people continue to die every year through the overprescription of drugs.

In a speech at the European Parliament in Brussels, the doctors and academics will say millions of people are being given unnecessary medication - such as statins, blood pressure pills and glucose lowering drugs for type 2 diabetics - which have no effect whatsoever and are therefore a waste of money, leave many people suffering further due to side effects, or cause excess deaths.

In November, a Cambridge University study found half of over-65s take at least five drugs a day. The figure has risen from just 12 per cent 20 years ago, while the proportion taking no pills at all fell from around 20 per cent in the late 1990s to seven per cent now. Taking up to five drugs a day increased the dangers of premature death by an estimated 47 per cent, researchers warned.

Overprescribing medications is now thought to be the third most common cause of death after heart disease and cancer, which kills around 125,000 and 150,000 people a year in the UK respectively.

Many scientists are compromised by the grants they rely on from pharmaceutical companies, the experts argue. Between 2009-14 "Big Pharma", including companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, was given $13bn in fines for criminal behaviour including hiding data on harms of drugs and manipulating results.


'Misinformed' dietary advice

The medics are also calling for a complete overhaul of "misinformed" national dietary guidelines they say is actually fuelling the obesity crisis. A much greater focus should be made on lifestyle interventions instead, which would result in far greater benefits to a patient.

Speaking ahead of the event, Dr Aseem Malhotra, a London-based cardiologist and member of the Academy of Royal Colleges obesity and choosing wisely steering groups, told i: "After almost 17 years as a doctor, I have slowly and reluctantly come to the conclusion that honest doctors can no longer practice honest medicine.

"Poor quality research, influenced by vested interests has resulted in an epidemic of misinformed doctors and misinformed patients leading to poor clinical outcomes and the unwitting practice of unethical medicine due to the lack of transparency in the prescription of medications, which are now estimated to be the third most common cause of death after heart disease and cancer."

Dr Malhotra blamed an "epidemic of misinformation" over dietary advice he believes has driven the consumption of refined carbohydrates and added sugars.

"This is at the root cause of the obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemic. Thankfully, there are plenty of people who ignore government dietary advice and, in many cases, manage to reverse their type 2 diabetes and come off their medications."

Dr Malhotra called for a national campaign to resolve the "public healthcare crisis" and reduce the amount of medication people are taking. "We must push more lifestyle interventions, which clearly have a much more beneficial impact that come without side effects," he said.

"As there are so many commercial influences throughout the system that are hindering progress in revolutionising medical care, I think there needs to be a Chilcot-style inquiry to resolve this issue as a matter of urgency."


Queen's physician

Sir Richard Thompson, personal physician to the Queen from 1984 to 2005 as well as a past president of the Royal College of Physicians, who is also speaking in Brussels, told i: "Pharmaceutical companies are probably unethical in most of what they do. They hide the bad results and push the good results, then don't talk about the side effects of their drugs. If you encourage people from medical school to start looking into the background of various trials, then you might start to see a change in the system."

Sir Richard has argued against the use of statins, the cholesterol-lowering drug, among the wider public, saying most people will not benefit from them.

"With statins, they are only effective in people who already have heart disease, yet millions of people who are not at risk take them, so have become 'medicalised'", he said.

The Lancet and BMJ medical journals were engaged in a bruising "statins war" for three years taking opposing views as to whether or not statins should be more widely prescribed. Each accused the other of endangering public health.

Sir Richard also said how the public are being duped into buying supplements and vitamins almost all of which are "completely useless".

He said: "Gluten-free foods, which many people think are healthier, are also pointless in most cases. The only people who benefit are those with coeliac disease."

Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence based medicine at the University of Oxford, and Hanno Pijl, a professor of Diabetology, are also among the panel in Brussels.


Whistleblower

The group will cite recently submitted evidence to the science and technology committee by Dr Peter Wilmshurst, a whistleblower who has spent 35 years investigating and exposing research misconduct. He told MPs such misconduct is "much more frequent and has far more serious consequences than is admitted by universities and journals".

Dr Wilmhurst cited the use of beta-blockers as recommended in the European Society of Cardiology guidelines, which has increased patient mortality by 27 per cent, according to a 2014 study carried out at Imperial College, which it claimed has resulted in 800,000 excess patient deaths in Europe over the last eight years. Some 10 per cent - approximately 10,000 excess patient deaths a year - are believed to have been in the UK, it said.

"Some publications are simply organised criminal activities, which may be at the behest of sponsors, when prominent academics are paid large sums of money to publish false data by industry, or a sponsor may be one of the victims, when payments for conducting research are made to 'investigators', who simply fabricate data," Dr Wilmhurst said in his written evidence.

A recent BMJ editorial by Professor Heneghan and colleagues concluded that "few systematic changes have occurred to prevent such problems occurring again".