64%

[Flint]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Can you show us the data behind the chart?

Originally Posted by jinx

No. Did you follow the link?

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I followed the link. I looked at every page. I found no data.

You obviously didn't look very hard, or you would have seen this.

[Clodfobble]

2500 common medical treatments

I really wish they had at least specified whether they were examinig only prescription medications, or over-the-counter "home remedies" as well.

[Sundae]

I would expect it included both.
They were probably ranked in terms of sales so as to include the most common.

Cough medicines would fit the bill of common and ineffective for example.

[Happy Monkey]

I think I may have found where the data may be, but you have to subscribe. Click "Sections" or "Full review list" on this page.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Drugs? Is that what they mean by "treatments"?

[Happy Monkey]

They do review stuff like homeopathy, but I don't know if there's a way to determine if that stuff is counted in their chart.

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by Sundae Girl

Cough medicines would fit the bill of common and ineffective for example.

that is SO true. Why on earth do learned men and women tell patients to take OTC cough meds? For a cough med to be effective it needs to have a narcotic in it!

[dar512]

Originally Posted by lumberjim

pwned

I'm fairly sure that the 1957 Richman-Zeitfehlt amendment to the earlier Burkhalter rule shows that pwnage does not occur until the triple-dog-dare has been declared and then only if the daree fails to follow through on the dare within 48 hours.

[jinx]

Wonder Drugs That Can Kill, Discover Magazine

How often do today’s medical “breakthroughs” become tomorrow’s discredited science? John P. A. Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston and the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, studied the question. He examined the most-cited clinical studies published in the top three medical journals between 1990 and 2000 to see how well researchers’ initial claims held up against subsequent research. His findings, published in JAMA, show that the key claims of nearly one-third (14 out of 49) of the original research studies he examined were either false or exaggerated. Small study size, design flaws, publication bias (failure to publish negative results or duplication of positive results), drug-industry influence, and the play of chance were among the problems Ioannidis found that caused false or exaggerated claims.

Furberg’s efforts to debunk overly enthusiastic interpretations of medical studies have led to occasional clashes with his colleagues. In 2004 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was preparing to hold hearings on the safety of painkillers known as COX-2 inhibitors, including Vioxx, which David Graham, an official in the FDA’s Office of Drug Safety, said may have caused an estimated 39,000 to 60,000 heart-attack deaths in just five years. At the time, Furberg was a member of the FDA Advisory Committee on Drug Safety and Risk Management. But after he told The New York Times that the COX-2 inhibitor Bextra also caused heart attacks, the agency made a surprising move: It removed Furberg from the advisory panel. Sandra Kweder, acting director of the Office of New Drugs, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the FDA, told a reporter that Furberg’s comments showed he could not be objective. Furberg now asks, “If bias was a concern, why did they allow 10 advisory members with ties to the manufacturers to be seated?” He was reinstated to the panel two days later and vindicated when the FDA announced that it had asked Pfizer to voluntarily withdraw Bextra from the market.

Phil Brewer, the doctor whose stroke patient died after being treated with tPA, says media portrayals of new medicines are often “irrationally exuberant.” He points to a May 2007 article in The New York Times that he says typifies the problem. The article, about stroke victims, said that the clot-buster “tPA was shown in 1996 to save lives.” Yet in 2001, the American Heart Association (AHA) had withdrawn the claim that the drug “saves lives” from its promotion of tPA for stroke after the group was challenged to provide scientific evidence to support that claim. The AHA was also the subject of scrutiny when it was revealed that in the decade prior to its recommendation that doctors use tPA for stroke victims, the heart association had received $11 million from Genentech, tPA’s manufacturer.
The same Times article quoted a number of doctors saying that too few stroke patients were receiving tPA, yet failed to mention that many of these same doctors had received funding from Genentech. Nor did the article give a hint of the ferocious battle among doctors about the safety and efficacy of tPA: While a number of professional associations endorsed the drug, many others, such as the American Academy of Emergency Medicine, said it should not be considered the standard of care for acute stroke.
Asked about this reporting, Barbara Strauch, health editor of The Times, responded, “While some researchers had said in interviews that they believed the drug saved lives, our article incorrectly stated that the study had made that conclusion.” Strauch said the paper would publish a correction—which it did this past April, nearly a year later. (This was done in response to DISCOVER’s inquiries.) She added, “It is also true that some researchers quoted in the article, like many stroke researchers and many who study other diseases, are funded by and receive honoraria from the pharmaceutical industry.

[jinx]

The Evidence Gap - Costly Cancer Drug Offers Hope but Also a Dilemma.

Looked at one way, Avastin, made by Genentech, is a wonder drug. Approved for patients with advanced lung, colon or breast cancer, it cuts off tumors’ blood supply, an idea that has tantalized science for decades. And despite its price, which can reach $100,000 a year, Avastin has become one of the most popular cancer drugs in the world, with sales last year of about $3.5 billion, $2.3 billion of that in the United States.


But there is another side to Avastin. Studies show the drug prolongs life by only a few months, if that. And some newer studies suggest the drug might be less effective against cancer than the Food and Drug Administration had understood when the agency approved its uses.

[jinx]

Accidental Poisoning Deaths Spike Upward

"While we don't know the cause behind the recent increase in falls mortality, it appears that the increase in poisonings is largely due to prescription drugs," said study co-author Susan P. Baker at Johns Hopkins University.


Other studies have also found alarming increased in prescription drug overdoses, while prescriptions for antidepressants, in particular, have soared. Meanwhile, overall abuse of certain prescription drugs nearly doubled from 2000 to 2007, according to separate research by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.



"I think part of it is a misunderstanding of what prescription means; it doesn't mean safe," Dr. Lewis Nelson of the NYU Langone Medical Center told LiveScience in a July interview. "It also at some level means a little more easy access to it. So you don't have to stand on the street corner and deal with shady characters." Nelson points out that this is particularly the case with teenagers, who are increasingly abusing such drugs.

[lumberjim]

Originally Posted by dar512

I'm fairly sure that the 1957 Richman-Zeitfehlt amendment to the earlier Burkhalter rule shows that pwnage does not occur until the triple-dog-dare has been declared and then only if the daree fails to follow through on the dare within 48 hours.

sub section k clearly states that when you act like a fag, you become inherently pwned.

please.

I don't want to have to dust off that old saw.

kindly just trust my judgment for pwnage declarations.

[dar512]

Originally Posted by lumberjim

sub section k clearly states that when you act like a fag, you become inherently pwned.

please.

I don't want to have to dust off that old saw.

kindly just trust my judgment for pwnage declarations.

I might allow it, except that article III declares that pwnage arguments must be filed within 500 days of the original pwnage declaration.

I'm afraid your pwnage certificate expired on the 14th of this month. You might still have time to file for a wet noodle whipping, but you'll have to see the noodlage office down the hall for that.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by jinx

According to BMJ Clincal Evidence, 64% of 2500 common medical treatments are ineffective, harmful, or of unknown effectiveness. Quite the reality check... Take care of yourselves people - diet and exercise.

Looks like stats for ACLS. But I don't think people want you to stop trying stuff even if it is in the category of unknown effectiveness, which basically means "we don't have enough research to know if it works but it makes since so try it if you have nothing left in your bag of tricks."

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

But I don't think people want you to stop trying stuff even if it is in the category of unknown effectiveness,

Depends on who you mean by "people" I guess. I currently have multiple medical professionals emphatically discouraging me from trying stuff that is of unknown effectiveness (in the larger scale at least,) yet is demonstrably not harmful.