The Two Most Dangerous Words in Medicine are "Studies Show."
Jerry Addler has published his New Year’s resolution in Newsweek,
I will not report on any amazing new treatments for anything, unless they were tested in large, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trials published in high-quality peer-reviewed medical journals. If that means not telling NEWSWEEK’s readers about, say, a new magnetized-water cure for osteoporosis, cancer and autism—well, there are infomercials to fill that gap. The risk that I might overlook the next Lipitor is outweighed by the danger of hyping the next laetrile, the discredited 1970s-era miracle cancer drug made from apricot pits that failed to cure Steve McQueen.
Now if only all journalists kept on smoking and drinking and took up this resolution instead of a futile gesture to cut down on vices, then we may all be a little healthier.
Addler was converted by a new book (not yet in the UK) by R. Barker Bausell, a biostatistician at the University of Maryland, called Snake Oil Science: The Truth about Complementary and Alternative Medicine. (Oxford University Press Inc, USA).
He wrote the book to,
educate journalists and the public that “just because someone with a Ph.D. or M.D. performs a clinical trial doesn’t mean that [it] possesses any credibility whatsoever … The vast majority are worse than worthless.”
The problem, he says is that,
researchers, even those without a direct financial stake in the outcome of a trial, often have a psychological investment in what they’re testing. Their papers get published because the editors of journals in fields like homeopathy start from the premise that the whole thing isn’t a preposterous hoax, as Bausell and most mainstream doctors believe. If someone really does cure cancer—whether a drug company researcher or a Tibetan herbalist—The New England Journal of Medicine or The Journal of the American Medical Association will be happy to publish the news.
This is good news. I wish all UK Health journalists would put this new book at the top of their reading list for 2008. We just are sick to death of seeing press releases on research being presented as the next big break through. We are fed up with unreferenced news stories. And most of all, we are fed up with uncritical reporting of fashionable health nonsense just becuse its fits in with a journalists preconceived ideas about what ought to be true about the world.
PS – Note how the homeopaths have started a fightback against this article in the comments section of Addler’s post. Ha Ha Ha.
Related posts:
- Can I See Your Working, Please? I promise I will write about something else other than nonsense in the Daily Mail, but today’s story requires a comment or two. Their headline story on the on-line edition...
- The Society of Homeopaths are a Shambles and a Bad Joke. The last time I said that, the Society tried to sue me and my web hosts for defamation. So let’s say it again. They are a shambles and a bad...
- £10,000 if you can show homeopathy works Edzard Ernst and Simon Singh have issued a challenge to homeopaths: show the world your evidence that homeopathy is effective for any single condition. After recently publishing a book...
- As Swallowed by the Media You may have noticed on several news sites yesterday that Tangerine peel ‘kills cancer’ as reported by the BBC, the Sun, Sky News and others. Apparently, theBritish Pharmaceutical Conference...
- Trademarked Science Trade-Offs I have written before about my assertion that if you find someone saying that you cannot get all the nutrients you need through food, then you have also found someone...
Whoa, LCN. From those comments to Addler’s post:
“The peer-reviewed journal Similia, which I edit, makes its editorial decisions based on just one premise: that the substance capable of removing the entirety of a patient’s illness is that substance that can most closely reproduce the patient’s symptoms in the healthy. That premise remains almost undisputed in modern medicine.
Yours sincerely,
John Harvey
Editor, Similia”
These people really do live in another universe.
I’ll be putting that book on my wishlist.
from http://blogs.kitsapsun.com/kitsap/letters/archive/2006/09/steve_mcqueen_he_didnt_die_of.html
It is well known that Steve did suffer from Mesothelioma, but it was not the cause of his death! On Nov. 4, 1980, he checked into the Santa Rosa Clinic in Juarez, Mexico. On Nov. 6, he underwent surgery for the removal of an abdominal tumor, which when removed, weighed in at five pounds!
The surgeon was Dr. Cesar Santos Vargas, and the operation was a success. However, Steve suffered a heart attack while in the operating room. Sixteen hours later, he suffered a second and massive heart attack while undergoing recovery. Steve McQueen died at 3:50 a.m. on Nov. 7, 1980. For the record, the official cause of his death was a massive heart attack and not Mesothelioma.
A classic case of “the operation was a complete success, unfortunately, the patient died’?