Three Australian doctors are part of an international team which has exposed major, inexcusable errors in a highly influential 2011 Lancet study on Vancouver’s Insite injecting facility, errors which nullify the study’s claim that it has demonstrably reduced overdoses in its immediate surrounding area.  The international team’s analysis has been sent by the Drug Prevention Network of Canada to the Ethics Committee of the agency which funded the Lancet study with questions regarding research fraud and professional misconduct.

The Lancet article, published online on 18 April 2011, claimed that drug overdose deaths within a 500 metre radius around Insite reduced by 35% while the rest of Vancouver reduced by 9%.  The article was influential in the Canadian Supreme Court hearings of May 12 this year, where the court reserved its decision on whether the Canadian Government is rightfully able to close the facility.  The Canadian government has been trying to close Insite since 2006, but has been hampered by court action by harm reduction activists.  A decision by the Supreme Court is expected late this year or early 2012.

The international analysis team, including four Australians, a Canadian PhD and Dr Robert DuPont, the first President of the US National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), found that claims of decreased deaths in Vancouver were not supported by the British Columbia Coroner’s data, which clearly indicated increased Vancouver drug deaths from 2002-2007, despite Insite’s commencement in September 2003.  The Lancet researchers were found to have manufactured an appearance of overdose mortality decreases by including 2001 in their pre-Insite comparison years, a year of significantly higher heroin availability and overdoses than the remaining years within the Lancet study’s focus.  Other journal studies by three of the researchers reveal that they very well knew that 2001 was markedly different to subsequent years.

Of greatest concern was the disclaimer by the Lancet researchers that they knew of no policing changes around Insite between 2001 and 2005 which might have affected overdose deaths.  In fact 66 police were added since 2003 to specifically patrol the 12 block area around Insite, the greater part of the area declared to have the 35% decreases in deaths.  So significant were these changes that activists lodged complaints with all levels of Canadian government as well as the United Nations, with three of the Lancet researchers collaborating in a 2004 journal article which described the ‘displacement’ of drug dealers and users to other parts of Vancouver as a result of the policing.

Drug Free Australia’s Research Coordinator, Gary Christian, said, “These researchers cannot truthfully claim they knew of no policing changes in the immediate area around Insite when some of their number produced an indignant study condemning the changed policing.  Inexplicable errors and memory lapses is the price the Canadian government has paid for entrusting injecting facility lobbyists with its scientific evaluation.  Activists are never likely to provide objective science and there are dozens of other Insite studies that must now be under a cloud as a result.”

Full analysis at www.drugfree.org.au/fileadmin/Media/Global/Lancet_2011_Insite_Analysis.pdf