Below is a post to the acor listserv by Kate Francis. I posted about this article as well.
I believe that Kate makes some important points here. David
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 04:23:25 -0400
From: Kate Francis <katemylist@YAHOO.CO.UK>
Subject: Validity, or otherwise, of drug trials.
Here is a link to a story which is making big news
here in England today, about trials for cancer drugs
being stopped early [ before they have run their full
course, thereby not establishing full data re
side-effects etc.] It appears that this is being done
with some drugs which show early promise, for the
financial benefit of Big-Pharma [ no surprise there
then! ].
[ there's a link on the right of the above page, to
the Annals of Oncology where the paper appears ]
I so wish that there existed a group of hard
scientists [ that's SCIENTISTS, NOT just medics who
might well have "scientific backgrounds", but that's
not the same thing at all! ] who would regularly
scrutinise the outcomes of drug trials and explain to
we patients just how much store we can safely put by
them [ ie. how they fit with what each individual
wants for themselves ]. A sort of Quackwatch for
conventional medicine ... "Stethescope-watch" maybe ;-) ?
I am very lucky in that my [ soon-to-be ] husband is a
physicist who works alongside chemists in a university
with a medical school, so I can have him provide this
service for me when necessary. But those who can't
are, in my view, very much at the mercy of mostly very
well-meaning medics who know a lot about a lot, but
who long since parted company with hard science.
Medicine is different - it is NOT science.
There have been occasions when my partner has had
occasion to ask questions of doctors, about their
interpretation of papers, charts / statistics to do
with my choices of treatment etc., and their inability
to understand and correctly interpret
results/statistics which papers report has been toe
curling to a real scientist.
This is NOT to say that the docs are in any way "bad
people" [ except for a few ], just to say that they
are doing something different from hard science, and
we patients are putting ourselves at risk if we don't
understand the distinction, in my view. I believe
that to most patients the white coat of a medic
represents the same thing as the white coat of a
scientist.
For example, I wonder how many people who are taking
statins REALLY understand how the statistics work when
their doc says "these will help you". Do they
understand that if 100 people at medium risk of a
heart attack take statins for 10 years, then only
between 1 and 5 of them [ depending on which research
one looks at ] will have been saved from a heart
attack which they would otherwise have had? The other
95 or so will not benefit at all, but will be open to
the side effects [ and the expense ] of course. I
believe that most patients hear that the statin is
going to help "me" ... they don't understand that
there is only a small chance of that happening. If
they DO understand and are happy to go ahead then of
course that's fine, but statistics are another country
to most people.
And the details of how drug trials are conducted, from
initial idea to final product on the market, are
another planet. Big-Pharma is very happy to keep it
that way, IMHO.
best to all,
Kate [ arriving, with my dog, to live in PA, USA on
Saturday ... Big-Karma willing ;-) !!! ].
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