Thread by @tomstrong6

The Silence of the Plague Years

With a few documents. The purpose is to understand crimes such as selling & implanting recalled medical devices into PATIENTS. A crime committed with the complicity & cover of the Greek government through the regulating authority of EOF.

In the last few months, I have found that silence holds far more secrets than I can handle. I never imagined it like that. The constant upgrading of crimes. The scope of corruption, complexes, social racism and illiteracy that dominate Greek media & social media.Simply terrifying

Attiκon Alsos

"Mr Bouganis you have 30" seconds to tell me what you want".
HELP.
"No, I won't help you sir"
Why;
ΓΙΑΤΙ ΕΤΣΙ!
The lawyer's disrespectful response turned my head into a balloon. I was flying hopelessly over the western districts. Κling!
*You have a new delivery

I landed smoothly in a pastry shop in Kypseli.
"Shall I treat you to a sweet?"
& two, my sweet girl. Because I was lost, stressed by bitter stupid behaviours of those who always follow the easy pseudo-"radical" roads. Because they see the world not as it is, but as their MIRROR.

It was time for another upgrade.The most important of all. To see the world of medical devices as a professional journalist. It all started from my personal "insignificant" story:The death of my father, Parkinson's patient with an unchecked neurostimulator

https://twitter.com/tomstrong6/status/1514330583358398464

For almost 20 years I was a professional journalist in Eleftherotipia the greatest Greek newspaper until the banks decided to close it (2011). The same banks that supported with tens of millions of euros the government-supporting DOL newspapers (now owned by Mr. Marinakis).

So I knew how to do research. I knew how to read public papers. From the last October and on, I gave more than three testimonies to Greek Justice about the MURDER of my father. But the most important of all is that my mother and sister also testified.

https://twitter.com/tomstrong6/status/1486506849448964104

For a long time, some Greek journalists I was in touch don't write the news that National Transparency Authority will make report about my father's death (May 2020). That there has been an ex officio prosecution by the justice system. They don't write anything. They only promise.

I was "occupied" for hours by former colleagues that made me visit their newspaper & then completely forgot me. Their SILENCE about Medtronic became my TOP & most important personal motivation. I DO NOT ACCEPT IT. I still CONSIDER IT as AN INSULT OF MY PERSONALITY & MY ETHICS.

Trust me. You haven't read anything like this thread (or the others that they'll follow). IN ANY LANGUAGE. The Medtronic Scandal in Greece is UNLIKE anything you knew about medical devices. It's the ULTIMATE HORROR STORY of our modern times.

I'm not narrating a personal story. My research started from there. & expanded when I realized that I have to "leave" from my father's case & focus on medical illiteracy, one of the most important problems of Greek society. The main reason of the debilitating surrounding silence

The silence about medical devices is everywhere in media (social or not). And it grows a nihilistic way of thinking even to good minds. "Good luck with your lawsuit", wrote me, an American Journalist-Scientist. Thanks, but I never sued anybody. The case of my father is Ex Officio

There is a big difference between a lawsuit & an Ex Officio case. A gap that demands reading. Specially in a medical case.Yet, 99% of journalists in Greece, trust their "sources".They do a kind of parrot writing, even in a big scandal like #novartis hellas
justice.gov/opa/pr/novarti…

All Greeks know that Novartis bribed some government officials for... something they don't exactly understand. In Japan, the #Novartis scandal broke out for medical reasons. The state is not entirely corrupt. Thousands of patients reported side effects.
wsj.com/articles/BL-27…

Of course, the big motive is always the money. Some people do anything. Doctors too. In all countries. That will never stop, although societies can minimize the "side effects". How; With public education & knowledge that the honest scientists will make understandable to citizens.

Everywhere in the world, the Media have a critical role in medical literacy, but many times fail to play it by the rules. In Greece, they don't "play" anything, I've searched for articles translated in Greek about the #novartis scandal in Japan & I couldn't find not even one!

Which journalist informed Greek people that in 2015 #Novartis was shut down in Japan (one of the largest pharmaceutical markets) for 2 weeks due to non-reporting of drug side effects? Nobody. Because they were ALL MEDICAL ILLITERATE. & sadly remain
2015
wsj.com/articles/novar…

Don't worry, the thread is following the right path. An introduction that'll help you understand my answer on how the CEO of a big company like Medtronic can do things in Greece that in Japan or USA could have him imprisoned for a lifetime? He has government support and not only

Even in countries like the USA where people can find information from the state, there is a luck of general knowledge of what is a medical device & what categories of recalls exist. The rule is global: if TV doesn't play the news, they don't exist.

fda.gov/medical-device…

"For medical devices, the most important goal of the human factors/usability engineering process is to minimize use-related hazards and risks and then confirm that these efforts were successful and users can use the device safely and effectively".
fda.gov/medical-device…

Still, this is remaining to a "wish" level. Like all other machines, medical devices can show problems. With the manufacture, the software, anything.More often when they're implanted to the human body. The HVAD Heartware recall revealed a dreadful reality
propublica.org/article/heartw…

It was the FDA that failed to protect thousands of patients, we read at ProPublica: "As Heartware & Medtronic failed inspections & reports of device-related deaths piled up, the FDA relied on the device makers to fix the problems voluntarily rather than compelling them to do so".

According to ProPublica "The device also came with a steep price tag. Each HVAD cost about $80,000". Yet at 2013 in Greece the device was more expensive for ΑΗΕΠΑ Hospital of Thessaloniki.The seller was prepaid the entire amount of €138,000 even though the bad economic situation

It was not Heartware International, Inc.* that demanded to got paid "here and now" from the hospital, but an unknown Greek company, MEDITREND. Three years later, Medtronic acquired HeartWare for $1.1 billion.
*Developer of assist devices for the treatment of heart failure.

So in 2013 the Greek state paid almost double the price of a VAD system that FDA issued 13 Class I recalls involving multiple parts & components. Malfunctions included over 100 cases of failure to restart. 9 recalls class 1 were issued after Medtronic’s acquisition. Distribution?

Distribution (among else) = Greece.
accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/c…
accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/c…
accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/c…
accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/c…
accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/c…
accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/c…
accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/c…
accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/c…
accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/c…
But EOF never announced them

The Greek regulating authority, EOF, is the champion of lost class 1 recalls of Medtronic's medical devices, in the whole earth. Between 2008-2014 I found a lot of decisions about Chinese syringes & gloves. Not one recall for the Medtech giant, cause here reality doesn't exist.

unroll @threadreaderapp

To be precise, in Greece, Medtronic doesn't exist. For the Media. It exists in thousands of public state papers. In the "recording" of the selling of its medical devices to Greek hospitals. But not only by Medtronic Hellas. Many Greek companies are having "exclusive" partnership.