> You're the one in a little box who cant even manage to grasp what rigorous science is about.
"Rigorous science" like this?
Study: Money Talks in Drug Trials
June 5, 2007
http://www.intelihe alth.com/ IH/ihtIH/ EMIHC256/ 333/21291/
558296.html? d=dmtICNNews
SAN FRANCISCO (The New York Times News Service) -- Money talks -- and
very
loudly when a drug company is funding a clinical trial involving one
of its
products, according to a study released Monday.
University of California at San Francisco researchers looked at nearly
200
head-to-head studies of widely prescribed cholesterol- lowering
medications, or
statins, and found that results were 20 times more likely to favor the
drug
made by the company that sponsored the trial.
"We have to be really, really skeptical of these drug-company-
sponsored
studies," said Lisa Bero, the study's author and professor of clinical
pharmacy and
health policy studies at the university.
The research, reported in the online editions of PLoS Medicine, a San
Francisco medical journal, focused on studies of six statins --
including Pfizer
Inc.'s Lipitor, Merck & Co.'s Zocor and the generic drug Mevacor --
that had
already been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The trials
typically
involved comparing the effectiveness of a drug to one or two other
statins.
"If I'm a clinician or funder of health care, I really want to know
within a
class of drug which one works better," Bero said.
"What our study shows is that depends on who funds the study."
UCSF researchers also found that a study's conclusions -- not the
actual
research results but the trial investigators' impressions -- are more
than 35
times more likely to favor the test drug when that trial is sponsored
by the
drug's maker.
Drug manufacturers, through the industry's trade group, said the
federal
government cracks down on biased research.
"The new study overlooks the crucial role of the Food and Drug
Administration
in reviewing and approving claims that are based on clinical trial
results,"
said Ken Johnson, senior vice president of Pharmaceutical Research
and
Manufacturers of America, in a statement.
"Our industry is dependent upon well-designed clinical trials that
will pass
muster with the FDA," Johnson said.
Mark Gibson is deputy director of the Center for Evidence-Based Policy
at
Oregon Health & Science University, which reviews existing clinical
evidence for
drug effectiveness and safety. He called the UCSF study an "important
piece of
work."
"If Americans really want to be able to have sound evidence on which
to base
their choice of treatments, they need to think about ways to fund
independent
research," he said.
About half of the 192 statin trials examined in the study between 1999
and
2005 were funded by drug companies. Bero said drug companies fund up
to 90
percent of drug-to-drug clinical trials for certain classes of
medication.
About a third of the statin trials did not disclose any funding
source.
Trials with no disclosed funding source were less likely to favor the
so-called
test drug than those with industry funding, researchers found.
The researchers found other factors that could affect trial results.
For
example, pharmaceutical companies could choose not to publish results
of studies
that fail to favor their drugs, or they could be designed in ways to
skew
results.
The study found the most important weakness of trials was lack of
true
clinical outcome measures. In the case of statins, some trials focused
on
less-direct results such as lipid levels but failed to connect the
results with key
outcomes such as heart attacks or mortality.
"None of us really care what our cholesterol level is. We care about
having a
heart attack," Gibson said. "For the drug to be worthwhile taking, it
has to
be directly related to prevent a heart attack."
The UCSF study was funded by a grant from the California Tobacco
Related
Disease Research Program.
The study, "Factors Association with Findings of Published Trials of
Drug-Drugs Comparison," can be found online at www.medicine.
plosjournals. org .
Copyright 2007 The New York Times News Service. All rights reserved.
> >
> > Once you've done all that, you can come to a reasonably reliable
conclusion
> > as to how effective your proposed treatment is. If anyone's done that
for
> > using bicarbonate to treat flu or colds, I've never heard of it.
> So you're denying any degree of validity to the claims of a prominent
> physician of the day, working day in and day out in the trenches of
> the largest influenza outbreak of that era?
Not at all. It's such observations, among others, that lead to new areas to
research. I am saying that what was described here doesn't come anywhere
near the standard of scientific proof.
> Especially regarding something that is so simply and easily
> demonstrable for oneself. Most folks have a box of Arm & Hammer in
> their kitchen or bathroom.
You've lost me. How do you demonstrate it to yourself? Take some
bicarbonate every day, and if you don't come down with the flu, you can
conclude the bicarbonate prevented it? Even at the height of the 1917-1918
epidemic, most people did not come down with the flu, and it seems unlikely
that most of the people who didn't swallowed bicarbonate every day.
Let's try this - George Burns lived to be 100. For the last 70 years of his
life, he smoked 10-15 cigars a day. Is it reasonable to conclude that
smoking cigars is the secret to longevity?
> You've lost me. How do you demonstrate it to yourself?
The next time you are in the midst of a cold/flu or are heading that
way start on bicarbonate as described above, keeping it well away from
meals, coffee, acidic juices and sodas.
XML site map
> Remain in that little box if you wish.