“Insurance companies were significantly influenced by this paper and began paying for [this treatment] whereas they had been denying coverage for this procedure previously,” Weiss said.

Published in 1995 by the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the study supported the use of high-dose chemotherapy followed by a bone marrow transplant for advanced breast cancer.

The medical journal retracted the study today, the first such move in its 18-year history.

In the original study, Dr. Werner Bezwoda, the top chemotherapy expert in Johannesburg, South Africa, reported that he had found that high-dose chemotherapy and the subsequent bone marrow treatment prolonged survival, compared to conventional chemotherapy and bone marrow treatment, for metastatic breast cancer — or advanced cancer that has spread from the breast to other parts of the body.

But an official audit of the study, commissioned by the University of Wittswatersrand, where Bezwoda was on staff until his firing last year, and the Medical Research Council of South Africa, revealed phony data regarding the safety and efficacy of such treatment.

Records Not Found

A search of more than 15,000 sets of medical records available from two Johannesburg hospitals was performed to locate records for the reported 90 patients in the study. Records for only 61 of the 90 patients, many of them black South African women, could be found.

Of these 61, only 27 had sufficient records to verify eligibility, and of those 27, 18 did not meet one or more eligibility criteria. Only 25 patients appeared to have received their assigned therapy associated with their enrollment date.

“Women, both in the United States and elsewhere, have a right to be furious,” said Dr. Barron H. Lerner, associate professor of medicine and public health at Columbia University in New York and the author of The Breast Cancer Wars: Hope, Fear, and the Pursuit of a Cure in Twentieth-Century America.

Deaths Blamed on Treatment

There were at least three possible treatment-related deaths among patients receiving high-dose therapy. Only seven of the 61 patients survived and some of them may not have received the much-heralded therapy at all. In addition, two statisticians identified errors in both the data and analysis in the original article itself.

No patient signed a consent form, and there is little evidence of randomization of the patients.Randomization is a process to prevent bias in research so healthier patients, for example, don't get the new treatment and thus give it a better result.

Bezwoda admitted at a university hearing last year that he wrote the protocol for this 1995 study nine years after the study was completed. His admission apparently was made only after it was clear he was to be audited.

At the time, Bezwoda’s published results were the first trial ever to compare high-dose chemotherapy to some form of less intensive chemotherapy.

Scientists had hoped to test this therapy in larger, randomized controlled trials before endorsing it, but they were thwarted by desperate breast cancer patients who demanded the therapy. Breast cancer patients feared entering trials because they could not be guaranteed the high-dose therapy.

Work Was Heavily Quoted

Prior to this revelation, Bezwoda’s work had been quoted extensively in both scientific and lay publications, and as late as 1999, continually used by physicians in the decision-making process. A 2001 search found this paper referenced 354 times in other scientific publications.

With the data from these two South African trials now being discredited, and the results from 11 previous randomized studies showing little benefit, it is unclear whether there is a role for high-dose chemotherapy in the treatment of breast cancer patients.

Currently, there are now eight remaining studies, yet only two have randomized more than 200 patients and show a relapse-free survival after high-dose chemotherapy.

The retraction of the 1995 study follows an investigation of another study high dose chemotherapy by Bezwoda, which too was found to be fraudulent.

ABCNEWS Medical Editor Dr. Timothy Johnson and 20/20 producer Callie Crossley contributed to this report.