Poor medical research..

[Kwenda]

POOR SCIENCE.

Drug companies often publish the good results of drug trials, but very little is published when trials are not successful. This leads to a distortion of the basic research.

The raw data should be available to all, especially those who participated in the drug trials.!

For further information go to Alltrials.net .

Summary,

Last year during TEDMED 2012, in “The cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine”: Ben Goldacre on the missing data, he covered the vitally important news that a lot of medical research has gone missing, leading to a severely corrupted foundation for evidence-based medicine. If you haven’t read that quick post with 6 minute video interview, please do.

How can families or doctors make effective choices if we don’t have the relevant information?? Imagine the auto industry suppressing crash test results that didn’t go well! Not only is it ludicrous; imagine the impact on families who drove those cars.

It is a basic of the evidence based medicine that we’re taught to follow and apply.

The remedy is Open Science. Importantly, the definition includes open data, so others can check the reasoning for what was included and what was not.

Open data is such a big deal that in a 2009 TED Talk Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web, taught his audience to say out loud: “Raw Data Now! Raw Data Now!” His talk was titled The Next Web, and four years later it’s become real – that movement’s website tracks what people are doing with open data and the difference it’s making.

Medicine must catch up. Raw data now!

TEDMED 2012: The Tip of the Missing Data Iceberg. This data suppression being “the cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine.”

FOR Example: of 74 trials of antidepressants –

• Only 38 (about half) came out positive – no better than a random coin toss

• But 37 of the 38 were published (92% of them!)

• And of the 34 failed tests, only THREE were published

So: an earnest doctor looks at the evidence, and sees that 37 of 40 published papers are positive. The stuff clearly works, right? Wrong; the publication process fell short of producing reliable information for the doctor (and the patient).

Impact:

• Inhibits patients from getting good information.

• Inhibits doctors from having good information, too, with which to treat their patients

• It’s a severe disservice to the patients who put themselves at risk by being in a clinical trial to help improve the body of scientific knowledge.

• Makes an absolutely mockery of evidence-based medicine

Doctors and research scientists are taught to ask “What’s the evidence?” If the evidence has been made unreliable by editorial mistakes (or corruption), it weakens the whole system.

Dick

[AussieNeil Administrator]

How very important this is! How can doctors provide the best care for their patients and patients make a correct assessment out of the choices being offered to them with the facts so manipulated?

Encouraging to hear of the open data movement, but how can that succeed without effective government legislation?

What can we do as individuals, given companies will work hard to maintain the status quo where they can sell drugs they've spent millions on developing and testing - even if they don't work as claimed (or at all)?

Neil

[HAIRBEAR_UK Founder Admin]

here is a news article from The Independent, 05 FEBRUARY 2013 -

It indicates the the alltrials.net campaign has grown and is gaining support.

independent.co.uk/life-styl...

GSK to publish clinical trial data for drugs

Pharmaceutical giant shocks medical world by opting to reveal findings of all tests on patients

snippets:

“Britain’s largest pharmaceutical company has stunned the medical world by announcing it would back a campaign to publish all clinical trial results to preserve the safety of medicines.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) announced the move eight months after it was hit with a record $3bn (£1.9bn) fine in the US last July, in part for withholding safety data about its best selling diabetes drug, Avandia.

In all, 26 drug companies – including eight of the 10 biggest global players – have racked up fines of more than $11bn (£7bn) in the last three years after having been found to have acted dishonestly.

The results of clinical trials, most of which are funded by the drug industry, are frequently withheld when they deliver disappointing results. This distorts the evidence base and raises doubts about the safety of medicines that are available on the market.”

“The alltrials.net campaign has grown rapidly since publication of Bad Pharma four months ago, winning the backing of the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust. The Commons Science and Technology Committee has announced an inquiry into missing trials.

The latest target of the campaigners is the Swiss multinational Roche, which has been accused by the British Medical Journal of sitting on trial data for its flu treatment, Tamiflu, which governments around the world have stockpiled against a possible pandemic at a cost of billions of pounds.

GSK also said it intends to publish details of trials for all approved medicines dating back to its formation in 2000.”

From Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_P...

"Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients is a book by British physician and academic Ben Goldacre about the pharmaceutical industry, its relationship with the medical profession, and the extent to which it controls academic research into its own products.[1] The book was first published in September 2012 in the UK by the Fourth Estate imprint of HarperCollins. It was published in the United States in February 2013 by Faber and Faber.

[AussieNeil Administrator in reply to HAIRBEAR_UK]

That's ground breaking news - makes it harder for other companies to stick with the old ways. Impressive fines too!