Film about the lack of scientific freedom

Please support the documentary film: "The honest professor and the fall of the Cochrane empire."

(Note that donations are in DKK; 500 kr. is about US $71, €67 and £57).

Scientific freedom is constantly under attack, particularly in healthcare, which is dominated by the drug industry and other vested interests. People who speak truth to power may become removed from their posts. This happened to Professor Peter C Gøtzsche, Director of the Institute for Scientific Freedom in Copenhagen, one of the best known Danish healthcare researchers. He was expelled from the Cochrane Collaboration, a grassroots organisation publishing systematic reviews of the benefits and harms of healthcare interventions, which he co-founded. Cochrane’s leaders carried out one of the worst show trials ever conducted in academia. You can download Peter's book, "The decline and fall of the Cochrane empire" for free.

The main reason Cochrane expelled Peter was that he had demonstrated in his research that psychiatric drugs do more harm than good (1), which the general public also say when surveyed. You can download Peter's "Critical Psychiatry Textbook" for free. The other reason was that he had published his criticism of the prestigious Cochrane review of the HPV vaccine trials in a scientific journal (2).

We believe it is important to make a documentary film about this. I work in partnership with documentary award-winning filmmaker Janus Bang, Facts Film in Fredericia, Denmark, who has shown several of his documentaries on Danish TV. He has shootings going back to 2015. Peter has copies of the secret recordings of the Cochrane show trial where he was not allowed to be present and defend himself against the many false allegations invented against him during the show trial after Cochrane’s own lawyer had exonerated him. Peter has documented it all in detail in two books (3,4). Peter gave a talk in 2019 for CrossFit physicians in USA about his expulsion.

This dark period in medical science where a once trusted institution went about their task in a manner that mirrors how the drug industry operates needs to become widely known.

We believe the film will create a lot of interest. We hope you will support the film, so it can be realised. The donations will be used to cover the production costs.

1 Gøtzsche PC. Deadly psychiatry and organised denial. Copenhagen: People’s Press; 2015.

2 Gøtzsche PC. Vaccines: truth, lies, and controversy. New York: Skyhorse; 2021.

3 Gøtzsche PC. Death of a whistleblower and Cochrane's moral collapse. Copenhagen: People’s Press; 2019.

4 Gøtzsche PC. Decline and fall of the Cochrane empire. Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom; 2022.