Dr. Douglass on drug studies
For "scientific" drug studies, 2 out of 3 is the norm
One of the fundamental pillars of what's called The Scientific Method - the empirical standard which all research is supposed to strive for - is "repeatability." In other words, a study that yields a certain conclusion should ALWAYS yield that identical conclusion when repeated in the same way. If it does not, the research is flawed.
This concept is the backbone of science itself, really. Knowing this, guess what a review of 13 years worth of research published in three major medical journals revealed? I'll give you a clue: Much of this research has to do with the effectiveness of DRUGS.
Yep, you guessed it - a lot of it doesn't hold water.
According to a recent Associated Press article, 32% of the highest-profile research conclusions published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet (my favorite) and the New England Journal of Medicine between 1990 and 2003 were either contradicted by later, more rigorous study or were found to be less concrete than the original studies led us to believe. Here are just a few of the reversals the article mentioned:
Hormones that were "proven" to protect menopausal women from heart disease were later shown to actually increase their risk of the disease.
Nitric oxide does not improve survivability of patients with respiratory failure, despite what an earlier study had shown.
A specific antibiotic treatment found in a small study to improve survivability in some sepsis patients was found to be meaningless in a larger study.
Although nothing revealed in this article is so Earth-shaking in and of itself, it still serves as a great reminder of something I've been saying for years: That many of the studies our FDA uses to determine the safety and efficacy of a drug are be just plain WRONG. A lot of them are routinely reversed in future research of a more stringent nature.
This is especially likely, because drug makers design and structure studies to try and cast the anticipated results in the most favorable light. That means a lot of studies may have a less-than-objective methodology from the get-go...
The net result, quite simply, is drugs that kill, cripple, and are not even always recalled.
Daily Dose Friday August 5, 2005
One of the fundamental pillars of what's called The Scientific Method - the empirical standard which all research is supposed to strive for - is "repeatability." In other words, a study that yields a certain conclusion should ALWAYS yield that identical conclusion when repeated in the same way. If it does not, the research is flawed.
This concept is the backbone of science itself, really. Knowing this, guess what a review of 13 years worth of research published in three major medical journals revealed? I'll give you a clue: Much of this research has to do with the effectiveness of DRUGS.
Yep, you guessed it - a lot of it doesn't hold water.
According to a recent Associated Press article, 32% of the highest-profile research conclusions published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet (my favorite) and the New England Journal of Medicine between 1990 and 2003 were either contradicted by later, more rigorous study or were found to be less concrete than the original studies led us to believe. Here are just a few of the reversals the article mentioned:
Hormones that were "proven" to protect menopausal women from heart disease were later shown to actually increase their risk of the disease.
Nitric oxide does not improve survivability of patients with respiratory failure, despite what an earlier study had shown.
A specific antibiotic treatment found in a small study to improve survivability in some sepsis patients was found to be meaningless in a larger study.
Although nothing revealed in this article is so Earth-shaking in and of itself, it still serves as a great reminder of something I've been saying for years: That many of the studies our FDA uses to determine the safety and efficacy of a drug are be just plain WRONG. A lot of them are routinely reversed in future research of a more stringent nature.
This is especially likely, because drug makers design and structure studies to try and cast the anticipated results in the most favorable light. That means a lot of studies may have a less-than-objective methodology from the get-go...
The net result, quite simply, is drugs that kill, cripple, and are not even always recalled.
Daily Dose Friday August 5, 2005
posted by Mrs.Cranky Yankee @ 11:52 AM
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