What Dr.'s dont know about the meds they prescribe, 12 min TED talk.

[olympus mon]

This is a very serious problem. The misconduct of science journals, governing organizations and drug companies is giving science a bad name! There is a difference. Science should not be pulled into the politics of big business.

The public must demand ALL clinical trials be published not just the positive ones. Positive results are more than twice as likely to be published as negative ones and some times more than 3X's while the negative results get buried never to be found or even worse not allowed to be read which is unlawful under the Freedom of Information Act.

Ill say that again, your DOCTORS are not allowed to see all the trials results on medications they prescribe! They cant see all the data and findings to best serve your health needs. Fookin scary!

http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_what_doctors_don_t_know_about_the_drugs_they_prescribe.html

Please steer way from any Big Pharma CT theory talk or Ill have to lock this thread. Keep the discussion fact based please. This one walks a fine line so lets be respectful of Travs wishes on these topics.

 

[universecannon]

Thanks, i'll watch it tonight. The stranglehold big business/pharma/politics has on science is really unfortunate and disgusting

I've heard that only between 5-10% actually get published..No one really knows the implications of this and how it skews things, but its an important question that needs more attention. Its not only big business/pharmas fault, but they're a part of it- and the consequences there are much more grave than in other areas. Really though cherry picking is just widespread regardless. But along with cherry picking, this surplus of unpublished studies is also partially due to journals being biased and preferring to post more positive results than negative

Theres also the problem of 'ghostwriting'.. Companies fund countless studies to try and make their product look good, and cast doubt on other studies showing its downfalls/dangers. The tobacco industry did this for years and avoided countless lawsuits all the way up until the 80's or so. Sometimes they literally pay scientists just so they can put the scientists name on a study that they never actually participated in, or had anything to do with..aka, ghostwriting

 

[Michal_R]

Thanks for this important link.
It is fookin scary indeed!

 

[olympus mon]

Pretty eye opening regarding the top 12 anti depressant findings in 2010.
75 trials were done. 38 showed these meds have positive findings, 36 showed negative findings. What was published for Dr's to educate themselves....?

37 positive trial reports and 3 negative with the others buried and not able to be read!

What I dont like is when people come down on the scientist or Doctors to blame. The medical professionals can only know what they are allowed to see and the good scientists in the labs have less than 1/10th of their findings ever made public or published and far less if their findings are negative!

This means huge sums of money and data are being wasted and we, the people pay the cost often times with out loves and health.

 

[hixidom]

It is fookin scary indeed!

I second that "indeed".

 

[The Traveler]

I know from inside information that of the Dutch GP, only 42% passed basic medicine know-how in 2010.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

 

[Amygdala]

Reminds me of the Eli Lilly Prozac trials. Big pharma are the devil.

CNN.com - Papers indicate firm knew possible Prozac suicide risk - Jan 3, 2005

Just my educated opinion and I by no means intend to persuade people off their meds or to even give medical advice. It is still worth pondering that neither your doctor nor big pharma have ANY idea how the mind really works, and yet prescribe drugs as though they did.

I'm serious. No idea. The pathways of drug metabolism and correlated effects are easy to learn. Drugs that excite or sedate are simple to trace. Drugs that affect mood are completely misunderstood.

 

[Hyperspace Fool]

Thanks for posting this OM. It is important for people to realize this.

I can't count the amount of time I have people trying to convince me that whatever script they are using is safe and wholesome... most of the time without ever reading any of the material available on the chemical in question. I have to pull up the studies for them and show them that even the positive ones we are allowed to see are often frightening.

There is a blind faith in doctors and scientists that must be addressed. Most of them are not bad people, and are giving the best advice they know how, but they have clearly been manipulated by people with no interest in the truth or public health. The guiding force behind most research is profit. People who pay for clinical studies want results that justify the expense. Period.

When I was telling people this kind of stuff decades ago, people looked at me like I was a lunatic. But somehow, the climate is changing now. People are having their eyes opened. The rash of scandals and revelations about formerly CT things has made people pay attention. Currently 83% of Americans believe that there are conspiracies to manipulate them and do them harm. This means that more people believe CTs now than believe in Evolution.

I won't violate the CT policy here, but it is impossible to really discuss this issue without recognizing that there are people conspiring against the public good for purely economic reasons. This is not a theory. I won't speculate about the exact nature of the scams being played out on us daily... as that would involve theorizing.

One last thing. I have been talking about this on a number of threads recently, but it deserves repeating. There is no regulation on what must go into placebo pills. A 2010 survey revealed that 92% of the published clinical trials never mention what they used for a placebo... and a study of what the other 8% used suggests very bad news for us. Placebo fraud rocks the very foundation of modern medical science; thousands of clinical trials invalidated - NaturalNews.com

We see that sugar pills are used in diabetic medicine tests, hydrogenated oils for heart medicine... and so on. This is the worst kind of fraud. When you only need to be 5% better than the placebo, water would be 5% more effective than a substance that aggravates the condition. Some medicines get approved with only 1% better than placebo results.

I don't blame the doctors so much, though they should know better and have the obligation to do due diligence research on what they prescribe. Legally they can be held responsible if the information was available somewhere and they did not avail themselves of it. Negligence is the largest form of malpractice. However, I do find the scientists who take the money from the corporations and run "clinical studies" they must know to be fabrications extremely culpable. These people are evil and should be jailed along with their scruples deficient funders.

 

[Hieronymous]

I don't blame the doctors so much, though they should know better and have the obligation to do due diligence research on what they prescribe. Legally they can be held responsible if the information was available somewhere and they did not avail themselves of it. Negligence is the largest form of malpractice. However, I do find the scientists who take the money from the corporations and run "clinical studies" they must know to be fabrications extremely culpable. These people are evil and should be jailed along with their scruples deficient funders.

It's not always the case in suspect clinical studies that scientists are fraudulent or irresponsible, more often then not their work it technically accurate and if you take the time interpret the data within the papers they present you'll find it is accurate.

Often the abstract is re-written by a drug company executive possibly with a B.S (with no relevant qualifications in the subject in question) so it seems credible on the surface. They present the drug being trialled in a positive light when the study found the opposite. Most doctors (and many scientists) simply don't have the time wade through all the research papers that come their way and just read the abstract. If the scientists disagree with the misrepresentation then they are informed that they can look for work elsewhere.

News institutions are real whores when it comes to quoting scientific papers based on what the abstract states and often present false information by quoting or misquoting abstracts to run sales up. I never believe statements by news peddlers on new wonder drugs as they usually just disguising advertisements as journalism.

 

[Hyperspace Fool]

It's not always the case in suspect clinical studies that scientists are fraudulent or irresponsible, more often then not their work it technically accurate and if you take the time interpret the data within the papers they present you'll find it is accurate.

Often the abstract is re-written by a drug company executive possibly with a B.S (with no relevant qualifications in the subject in question) so it seems credible on the surface. They present the drug being trialled in a positive light when the study found the opposite. Most doctors (and many scientists) simply don't have the time wade through all the research papers that come their way and just read the abstract. If the scientists disagree with the misrepresentation then they are informed that they can look for work elsewhere.

News institutions are real whores when it comes to quoting scientific papers based on what the abstract states and often present false information by quoting or misquoting abstracts to run sales up. I never believe statements by news peddlers on new wonder drugs as they usually just disguising advertisements as journalism.

Allowing your accurate work to be misrepresented is a moral and legal failing in my opinion. If your love of work (for people who would put public health at risk for a few measly dollars) supersedes your love of humanity... than you are culpable and share in the guilt.

I hear this defense way too often. "We are good people and did the best we can, but we need this job and have to go along with the program..." Yadda yadda yadda.

No.

You need not. You can sack up and do the right thing. People think Señor Snowden is a hero for whistleblowing... and he is to some degree, but my thoughts on it were "Dude, you played ball with the wrongdoing for years and took a lot of money to play god. What the hell took you so long to grow a pair?"

I understand the fear that people have, and I don't want to completely denigrate those people who can't find the courage to do the right thing... BUT I still feel it is right to call such people out and say what for weak, complicit losers they are.

The logic you are using to defend the scientists who have their work misrepresented and just bend over and take it because they are afraid of losing their job... could be used to defend any human rights violators. Professional torturers don't WANT to waterboard people or shock their nuts... but they need the job and little Johnny has to go to college. Phooey.

Clearcutting loggers, Monsanto thugs, scientists who cover up oil spills, climate change deniers... etc. etc. They SHOULD lose their jobs. They should go live under bridges and eat out of trash cans like the people they have injured.

Sorry. No pass for these people.

 

[Hieronymous]

I'm certainly not defending them man, just telling it like it is. I think you've really taken my words out of context.

Once you have a family and mortgage you become vulnerable. If you stick to your moral beliefs as a matter principal then there is a good chance you will never work in that field again.

Morals don't go far when it comes to feeding your family if you can't get work.

My circumstances are slightly different but I'll never work again because I offended the wrong group of people.

I am as strongly anti corporation as almost anyone you'll ever meet, one of my favorite talks ever was given at the Australian Festival of Dangerous Ideas by the social commentator Mike Daisy. The talk was titled "Sleeping With The Enemy - Collaborating with Corporations Sells out the Human Race"

Many times in the talk he stated "Suck the corporate cock" in reference to anyone who in any way collaborates with a corporation in any form.

I won't suck a corporate cock if you put a gun to my head and try to force me - I'll take the bullet.

To quote a few lines from Mike Daisy's talk (selectively edited to save space - the transcript is several pages long)

Mao and Stalin, and Hitler are horrifying, but they are human.

The corporations are not human, and you need to remember this.

You need to remember that every time you are tempted to speak glibly about how evil a corporation is being.

A corporation can never be evil. A corporation can never aspire to that kind of humanity.

Corporations are inherently amoral; they exist outside of any framework of humanity.

They do not understand humanity at all and we have chosen to create them. We have chosen to endow them with these powers, and now they live amongst us, and above us.

We made that choice, we gave them that strength. We continue to give that strength to them day after day, after day.

And that is why this is a war. There is a war going on right now between the Human and the Inhuman.

And as horrifying as the human is, as horrifying as we can be to each other in this room, in so far, as anyone here can imagine under terrible circumstances, murdering another person, as terrible as any of us can cook up in this room.

We are not actually corporations, because the corporations have not even a glimmer of humanity. They are constructs that wander the landscape doing what they will.

Everyone in this room is going to die. You are. I assure you and so will I, and thank God for that.

Because that gift of death is what defines us. That gift is what makes us human the arc of our days ensures that we would live a life that is measured.

Corporations do not die and they have no conception of death. They just go and on and on, and on because there is no arc to them.

There is nothing human in them; there is nothing that could stop them in that sense.

Corporations would not exist without us. Without you. You are complicit. I am complicit. We are all complicit.

We, make this possible. We are in a hell of our own making. We live in here and we make it day after day, after day.

We live in this landscape. So the question becomes, what are we going to do? What are we actually going to do? It’s that’s where this talks break down isn’t it?

You need to stop pretending that you are free. Because everyday you believe that you are free, you suffer from terrible guilt.

Why do you live in such a world where you have so much? But have done so little. Fuck that noise!

You need to understand that you are not free. You need to understand that you live in an occupied country.

Your country is occupied by corporations and like any occupied country, there are lessons that we can draw from, there’s a history of the duty of resistance.

You need to look back to Vichy France. You need to look back to what people do when they are occupied. They resist and they resist in a thousand different ways.

Resistance needs to become our religion if you want to do this. If you want to be on the side of humanity, you need to resist.

People don’t have to work for and inside of corporations, they don’t have to.

People can find things to do and the more people who do not work inside a corporate context the better it is, for humanity and there are levels like anything.

It’s important ‘cause every corporation made is Limited Liability Corporation.

Every single one that is created limits liability. You understand that abstraction is the central tool of corporatism.

Once you create layers of abstraction, once human beings are not responsible for the things that are done inside that company. That is how things start to go wrong.