Concerned patients and even some healthcare providers are becoming aware of major deficiencies in medicine that are promoting continual cyles of treatment and disease. We, the editorial staff of Medical Veritas^®, are dedicated to restoring objectivity and accuracy of reporting in medical science. Our peer-reviewed medical journal will aspire towards discovering and disclosing medical truth or “veritas”—whether about vaccines, medicines, disease mechanisms, or other medical/health concerns. Specifically you will read honest opinions even when such opinions go contrary to vested interests and regimented medical practices.
     We are committed to uncovering medical truth by (1) looking beyond the biased, self-serving, selective presentations of data; (2) researching for forgotten or suppressed concepts and data; (3) setting a model for other publications; (4) encouraging others with inside information to come forward; and (5) providing a sounding board for presentations of views that may be in conflict with mainstream medicine or science.
     Some physicians and researchers, even prominent ones, will be quick to argue that there is no such thing as medical, or indeed, scientific truth. We may appear to be somewhat arrogant in our choice of the word “Veritas” in our journal title in that even prominent scientists are wary of assuming they have all the answers. It is virtually universally admitted that what we believe and consequently practice today is less than optimal and will be supplanted in the future by more accurate theories based upon improved understanding of disease mechanisms. Nevertheless, we can resist the current practice of flavoring data to meet financial and political objectives. Medical practice can be improved by full and honest disclosure of available data, research and analyses. We are committed to providing such disclosure and balanced information in Medical Veritas^® (i.e., Medical Truth). This journal will assist patients and conscientious healthcare providers in making informed medical decisions based on manuscripts of the highest integrity—presenting research that likely will not always harmonize with the interests of pharmaceutical companies and profit motives of present day health establishments. We will present evidence fundamental to deliberations of a court—reliable, authentic, accurate, and complete. We believe that a better informed public will help to ensure better medical practice.
     Adverse reactions to vaccines and other interventions invariably start as a small number of poorly described reports which are anecdotal and easily attributed to chance. As the numbers increase, those in authority in public health discern something might be wrong and closer scrutiny is needed. When the numbers reach the hundreds, decision makers have to persuade themselves that every adverse reaction is a false alarm—not a single one is a true association. When that happens, the numbers support a causal relationship except for the skeptics and those with conflicts of interest—who accept nothing but “scientific proof.”
     Public health officials and their respective medical establishments in the U.S. and U.K. often ignore important evidence, especially with regard to vaccines, stating “the weight of currently available scientific evidence does not support the hypothesis...” U.S. professor Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD and British lawyer Clifford G. Miller, Esq, explain, “Editors can subvert peer review by selecting only reviewers who will reject papers that run counter to—or praise papers that support—the interests of journal’s advertisers or its owners. Lines of independent research contradicting conventional wisdom can systematically remain unpublished.” They continue, “Such hard-to-publish research may prove that what the scientific community generally accepts as correct is, in fact, wrong. Research follows the funding, resulting in a wealth of publications favoring the funding interests. This can have a disproportionate effect on the ‘weight’ of evidence, especially for epidemiologic evidence in court.” [On Evidence, Medical and Legal, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Fall 2005;10(3):70–75].
     Medical Veritas^® includes a special feature entitled Forum that provides real life accounts on a specific topic based on the personal perspective of parents and caretakers. These reports combined with the more technical data, analyses, and results contained in other manuscripts throughout the journal will ultimately help all readers to see some underlying problems with the current medical system and encourage physicians and scientists to consider medical evidence instead of medical theories.
     Some researchers and scientists carrying on clinical and epidemiological investigations and other research have found that virtually all favorable data and analyses generated are readily published in peer-reviewed medical journals; while negative or deleterious findings appear to be suppressed. Some researchers have found themselves resigning on ethical grounds in an attempt to distance themselves from research fraud. Others have attempted to independently publish their data and analyses--only to receive directives from legal entities to “cease and desist publication in a medical journal.” We do not believe this type of censorship to be an isolated occurrence and recognize other journals’ tendencies toward positive bias. When individuals are subjected to censorship, experience intimidation, are not permitted to conduct research objectively, or when research data concerning a vaccine used in human populations is being suppressed or misrepresented, this is very disturbing and goes against all scientific norms—compromising professional ethics.
     When full disclosure—especially with regard to deleterious effects of an intervention—is lacking, this undermines stated aims of medical programs which can ultimately lead to recommendations for treatments that are ineffective and cause harm or death. Full disclosure is the characteristic aim of Medical Veritas^® and we believe that this less biased approach distinguishes it from other medical journals that may be prone to reporting only positive results.

Editorial by Marc Girard, MSc, MD

     Whereas reproducibility is a crucial criterion of scientific method, modern medicine is increasingly dependent on clinical trials or epidemiological investigations which, by their very nature and cost defy this criterion: you cannot reproduce a clinical trial based upon specific moments in the life of a selected population, and it is most often impossible for independent researchers to do long-term follow-up studies of epidemiological investigations that involve thousands of people.
     In addition, and contrary to the “hard” data in physics, chemistry or biology, data in clinical research is “soft”: as objective as data may be, the meaning of the results are dependent upon the experts that interpret them.
     Thirdly, notorious as they are, experts’ conflicts of interest are not the sole issue in this regard—the pharmaceutical industry is also capable of finding, creating, and promoting those scholars who will eventually be chosen as advisers by regulatory bodies or academic institutions—regardless of their real achievements. In a world regulated by the “publish or perish” rule and by the Darwinian dynamics of quotations by peers, the system’s equilibrium is often polluted by extensive duplication or selective quotation of conclusions. This is exacerbated by the recent development of the “h” factor (see a recent issue of Chronicle of Higher Education), where h is number of articles cited h number of times; h = 18 means you have 18 articles that were cited 18 times or more each, reducing each person’s career to a single number.
     As a result, the sad reality is that contemporary medicine has lost the way of science; moreover, by promoting the model of “experts” more recognizable by their arrogance and conflicts of interests than by scientific achievements and recognition by their peers, medical research has exerted a disastrous influence over other branches of science.
     Isolated scholars all over the world, especially among the younger generation, are driven to dismay or despair by this situation; some of them are threatened or even harassed by pharmaceutical firms, governmental agencies or academic institutions. Recently a colleague of mine was described as a "fringe person" because he dared to criticize some research methods that were poor; his opponents could not refute him so they demeaned his personality as an alternative.
     The aim of Medical Veritas^® is to offer support to these researchers and to coordinate resistance to this frightening drifting of medicine—as the main power of money is false promotion. We (who comprise the Editorial Board of Medical Veritas®) take a serene confidence in the power of integrity and in knowing how to resist. We also have learned that historically most achievements in art or science have come from individuals who had to withstand the prevailing ideology—sometimes for extended periods of time. Therefore, we are not bothered be- cause we are presently a minority in medical press and further, we do not allow ourselves to become discouraged if our views do not presently predominate within the profession and beyond. Finally, we accept that being a critic of the system is not in it- self a guarantee of rightness, and we are aware that our credibil- ity will eventually depend on the quality of our peer-review.
     It is likely that the Hippocratic principle first do no harm had greater currency at a time when effective medicines were rare or non-existent. And fundamental as it remains, this principle calls for a reformulation that accounts for the inevitable iatrogenic potential of effective treatments: first not to harm too much. As a result, this issue becomes a new part of a more general concern of ecological nature: up to which limits will healthcare professionals and society accept the hazards or tolerate the damages of technological interventions justified by the pursuit of putative beneficial effects? Consider, for example, populations at supposed risk of hepatitis B, even in high-endemic countries: is it acceptable to induce potentially fatal autoimmune disorders and to create an epidemic of pediatric forms of multiple sclerosis which were extremely rare prior to launching mass vaccination?
     As health professionals, we view the integrity of the body as sacred. Aware of the complexity of illnesses as well as the unavoidability of death, we consider humility in therapeutic care as a paramount virtue. Aware of the limitation of our knowledge and its cultural biases, we consider that health is the rule and the medical care necessitating intervention must be the exception. Many of the "experts" have repeatedly proved unable to assess, for example, the most expected class effect of statins occurring within a few weeks (rhabdomyolysis). We do not believe these “experts” have the slightest credibility in promising long term benefits; hence, our suspicion about the fallacies of “prevention” (e.g., vaccination, hormone replacement therapy, cholesterol, hypertension, etc.) which tend to transform everybody into a potential patient with ongoing disease and treatment cycles. Favoring the patient’s autonomy as the ultimate value, Medical Veritas® will devote its time and energy to publishing balanced information and making it widely available. [https://doi.org/10.1588/medver.2005.02.00091]