A celebrated Vancouver researcher used fabricated data and hid evidence of infected wounds to falsely claim his patented skin treatment could heal years-old bed sores in a matter of weeks, according to a leaked report.
If these results had been real, a product known as Meshfill would have been "close to miraculous" for people with spinal cord injuries, according to one expert. But investigators say they weren't real, and the public was never informed about an investigation that uncovered numerous examples of misconduct during a clinical trial for the liquid skin substitute.
The Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF) and CBC News have obtained a 64-page report about University of British Columbia (UBC) plastic surgery professor Aziz Ghahary's actions during a pilot study for Meshfill. It lays out how he presented falsified results to the public on several occasions, violated conflict of interest guidelines and was even accused of bullying by another researcher.
The March 2021 document, which was written by a UBC-appointed investigative committee of three outside experts, says Ghahary "abandoned his scholarly integrity in his pursuit of his attempt to establish that Meshfill should be used as a treatment for chronic pressure ulcer wounds" — also known as bed sores. Despite his public claims of success, none of the pressure wounds in the pilot study had healed and some became infected.
"These false claims gave patients and funders false hope by falsely claiming that Meshfill had quickly healed chronic pressure ulcer wounds. He also potentially endangered the health of future human trial subjects when Dr. Ghahary falsely claimed that there had been no adverse effects during the pilot study," reads the report.
Ghahary left his job at UBC shortly after the investigation was completed in 2021. He'd worked there since 2005.
The lack of public notice about the findings raises some questions for Leigh Turner, director of the Centre for Health Ethics at the University of California, Irvine.
"I think the findings of the report are extremely serious," Turner said. "I would hope that this is a really relatively extreme example of violation of scholarly integrity. But there presumably are other cases and there presumably are other investigative reports that are not seeing the light of day. That's a problem."
UBC spokesperson Matthew Ramsey said he could only confirm that Ghahary's employment at the university ended in 2021.
"Privacy law prevents UBC from commenting on allegations of scholarly integrity you've raised related to Dr. Ghahary’s research at UBC," Ramsey wrote in an email.
"Scholarly integrity investigation reports contain personal information that UBC, as a public body, is required to protect from disclosure under FIPPA [the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act]. UBC does not have the legal authority to publish/share this type of personal information."
[Tarek Elneweihi, a lawyer who represents Ghahary] noted that Ghahary is now 83 years old and is completely retired from research work.
Meshfill never reached the market in Canada and should not be confused with the cosmetic procedure advertised online.