
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 1, 1994                   TAG: 9404010290
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: TORONTO                                LENGTH: Medium

DATA DOCTORER SAYS HE DID WHAT'S BEST

The Montreal doctor who falsified patient data in several major American studies on breast-cancer treatment defended his actions Thursday, saying he knew better than academic researchers what was best for his patients.

Speaking to the press for the first time since his falsifications became public two weeks ago, Roger Poisson said: "Those people in their ivory towers don't treat patients. . . . It's all very well to compare clinical experiments carried out in the laboratory. I was on the battlefront with patients who were dying. There are very few people in the world who have treated as many breast-cancer patients as I have."

Although officials insisted that the results of the studies he contributed to remain valid, patients were horrified to learn that researchers and the U.S. government had known about the incorrect data for as long as four years.

Earlier this week, the director of the American breast-cancer studies was asked to resign by the National Cancer Institute after indications that additional data discrepancies had been found in a second Montreal hospital and not reported to the government.

The most important study to which Poisson sent false reports was a 1985 trial that concluded that lumpectomy, the removal of a breast tumor and surrounding tissue, can be as effective in treating some breast cancers as can mastectomy, the removal of the entire breast.

His patients accounted for 16 percent of those involved in that study, although only six cases included false information. Altogether, he sent in false data on 99 patients over a period of 13 years.

In a news conference in Montreal, Poisson, 63, suggested there was some sort of conspiracy to discredit him. He referred to the Spanish Inquisition and to Galileo and Copernicus and their difficulties with authorities because of their scientific views.

Poisson reported on 1,511 cases for 22 project studies. Of those, investigators from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity cited 115 apparent falsifications involving 99 cases in four studies. Six of those cases were in the 1985 lumpectomy study.

Poisson, who in 1993 was barred from receiving federqal grants, said he has not spoken before now because he has been ill with a rare virus. Thursday, and in a letter Wednesday in the Montreal newspaper La Presse, he said concern for his patients and dedication to his profession had led him to submit the incorrect information.

by CNB