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Archives | (September 2003)
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With A Stroke Of The Pen Part Two (cont.)
------------------------------------------------------------------ Page 5 of 6 And what is this miracle drug? Nothing new, really. What the researchers have done is to combine a handful of existing medicines used to treat various heart ailments in a single pill. It contains a statin drug, a number of blood pressure drugs including an ACE inhibitor, some folic acid and a low dose of aspirin. The researchers claimed in an article in the British Medical Journal that their chemical cocktail could reduce the incidence of heart attacks by 80% -- not perfect, but not bad. At least that’s how it would seem, until you look a little closer! First of all, their claim is based on what is called a “meta-analysis” that encompassed 750 studies involving 400,000 people. It sounds impressive. But what it really means in plain English is that they lumped together the results of other existing research and used the data to support their conclusions. Much of this research, however, was funded by drug companies and recent revelations have underscored just how skewed such research results can be. But that’s not the only problem with their proposal. They say that the pill would be “acceptably safe.” They say that only two out of one hundred people would have to discontinue the drug due to side effects. But they are also proposing that tens of millions of people take the drug – and that translates into hundreds of thousands of people suffering adverse affects! They also say that “only” one in ten thousand users would suffer fatal side affects. Again, the numbers suggest that this is far from a minor problem. Given the widespread use they foresee for the drug thousands would die! Moreover, that assumes that their assumptions regarding adverse reactions are correct, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that they are wildly optimistic. Take just one of the components – statin drugs – for example. Up to 25 percent of people taking statin drugs suffer significant adverse effects including muscle weakness, dizziness and allergic reactions. ACE inhibitors such as those they would include also are known to cause severe adverse reactions in many people. Further, there is no data on what the effects of combining the various ingredients might be! |
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