Nevins: I want to believe that somebody that I had trusted, that was a colleague for the last four, five years, someone that I viewed as a friend, was who I thought they were. And then you're faced with the reality of you've been deceived.
Fearing that reality, Joseph Nevins, whose own reputation was at stake, reviewed the original data which had justified the clinical trials for 112 patients. Dr. Nevins discovered that when the underlying data disproved Dr. Potti's theory, the data were changed.
Nevins: It became clear that there was no explanation other than there was a manipulation. A manipulation of the data, a manipulation of somebody's credentials and a manipulation of a lot of people's trust.
Pelley: Manipulated data? These were not errors?
Nevins: That's correct, it simply couldn't be random. It simply couldn't be inadvertent. It had to have been based on a desire to make something work.
...
Juliet Jacobs died three months after she entered the clinical trial. Walter Jacobs and eight others have filed suit. In his answer to the Jacobs lawsuit, Dr. Potti says he was "not aware that false or 'improper' information had been included in the research." Duke has apologized for the trials. And even though the patients hoped that they were getting an innovation that could save their lives, Duke says no one was really harmed because all of them received the standard of care in chemotherapy.
Jacobs: They did not advertise this as a standard of care program, they advertised this as an advanced clinical trial with great results. For what happened to my wife, I have to blame Potti and anyone else associated with him who knowingly promoted a false counterfeit clinical trial exploiting human beings.
Dr. Potti resigned from Duke. He faces an investigation into research misconduct.
