Manipulating medical study data
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As everyone knows, doctors prescribe medicines and medical procedures for their patients based upon their knowledge of the best scientific evidence available, evidence gleaned from reading unbiased, rigorously researched articles in prestigious medical journals. Unfortunately, what everyone “knows” is wrong. Doctors do prescribe remedies based upon what they read, but most of the information they obtain could scarcely be described as “unbiased.” Nowadays, the articles upon which doctors base their decisions are likely to have been written by someone who has financial ties to the company that created the drug or device in the first place, or to have been based upon studies that were manipulated by the people who ran them–meaning that the “best information available” is either misleading or an outright lie. This skewed information leads doctors to prescribe ineffective or dangerous medications to their patients. How It Works Almost everyone is now aware of the fact that Celebrex and Vioxx, two prescription pain medications primarily intended to help arthritis sufferers, have recently come under tough scrutiny and were almost pulled from the market because their use substantially increases the risks of serious complications–such as heart attacks, strokes, and cardiovascular disorders. However, how many people realize that the drugs’ dangers were known about at least since 2001 and were not made public knowledge? Very few I’d bet. In his book, Overdosed America, John Abramson, M.D., a member of the clinical faculty at Harvard Medical School, details what he calls the “misrepresentation of Celebrex and Vioxx.” He also analyzes similar deceptions with many other drugs and medical procedures that are commonly used in healthcare today and shows how lowering the use of unnecessary and often dangerous drugs and procedures would lead to massive cost savings and better healthcare. In the case… Source : accessmylibrary.com |