Bad Science At Our Expense

Wired.com has come out with a story which may strike fear into the hearts of all those taking meds. It tells a tale of how the FDA, which is assigned to check our drugs among other things, doesn’t seem to be doing the job correctly. The article states when the FDA finds something wrong with a drug or its research it puts out a warning letter, but the letter according to Wired tries “to hide any links between that negligence and any particular drug.” They go on to say there is no way to know if these types of letters do anything to protect the general public. Over the years most of us have heard about falsified research and there seems to be a lot of it around. Some say there is no more than ever, it is just the Internet news which highlights it. I don’t know about that. There is no doubt we are not being protected properly and the FDA has been assigned far too many things to be responsible for. It is also true the drug companies have large lobbies and plenty of money and they are influential in Washington. This could make it very hard for someone in the FDA to name companies or even talk about particular drugs, especially when there are political considerations.

A survey was taken where I presume the identity of scientists were protected. They were asked if they ever falsified scientific data for any reason. When the results were compiled the average of yes answers came to 1.9%. Remember these were the ones who admitted to it. It is important to remember more than one scientist may be working on a project so if one falsifies data it could mislead many others in the project. The ones who admitted to it were admitting not only to falsifying data, but to modifying it or even fabricating it. They also admitted to questionable research practices. Since these scientists were being asked the question of falsification it is believed the real results would probably be much higher, because it is also thought there are some who would never volunteer this information. You can read about this survey at PLOS. The address for the article is http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0005738. You can copy and paste it into your browser address bar. Sorry About Facts doesn’t use live links.

ProCon.org ran an article about 35 prescription drugs which were pulled from the market since 1970. ProCon quotes the FDA as saying a "drug is removed from the market when its risks outweigh its benefits. A drug is usually taken off the market because of safety issues with the drug that cannot be corrected, such as when it is discovered that the drug can cause serious side effects that were not known at the time of approval. Can you imagine if the FDA removed these drugs how bad they must have been? One of the problems with drugs is they might be too powerful for the human liver. The liver is the filter for our bodies and if it is destroyed we die. One drug was said to cause serious cardiovascular adverse events meaning stroke, death, etc. and yet it gave no more relief than other pain relievers. The makers of these drugs ran the gamut of famous drug companies from all over the world. Here is the address of the article, http://prescriptiondrugs.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=005528. You can copy and paste it into your browser’s address bar.

There is a lot of bad scientific research all around us, not only in the drug industry and some of it affects our lives. One group may take a scientific result out from a study which didn’t have enough samples, misstate what the results actually mean for their own ends and have someone conduct research who will be bias to those paying him to do the research. A good example of this can been seen when experts are called to testify in court cases. One side may hire a doctor or scientist to prove their case while the other side hires their expert. Both experts differ and take the side of the lawyers who hired them and submit scientific proof they are correct. It is then up to the lawyers to sort this out by asking pertinent questions and trying to pick apart the results. No lawyer is going to put an expert on the stand who is set to go against him. If one examines the records of some of these so called experts they will find certain ones always take the side of the person hiring them and bend their results to fit the situation.

It is said only 50% of the results of clinical trials are published, are you wondering why? While I cannot say in all certainty, it seems to me the companies do not want us to know there were results which might tarnish the reputation of the drugs being pushed. One source said it was far too common for researchers to leave out data which indicated negative findings. There is also something called selective observation. This is when a researcher makes a conclusion based on an existing belief which could be wrong. A simple example was given and stated if a researcher was doing an obesity study and believed only obese people lack willpower, the study would be flawed.

What does all this boil down to? It seems to me it is a question of who is watching out for us in these situations and are they effective. There certainly needs to be a standard and researchers must be held to it. Finding researchers who falsify data is happening far too frequently. Imagine this, for everyone we find there might be 2 or 3 more we don’t find who will say anything to get a great payday from some drug company no matter what the drug might do to us. It reminds me of the lady who represented an insurance company and was responsible for not allowing the company to pay for a bone marrow transplant for a cancer patient. The patient died and at a company meeting the lady bragged about how much money she had saved the company by denying these types of things. She had absolutely no regard for the lives of others.

There are far too many people in the world who are willing to sacrifice us to get a great payday. There are others willing to do it to achieve power. There are also those who have preached about how the earth is over populated and the population needs to be drastically reduced. It seems like we are an endangered species unless everyone gets their act together and pushes government for better protection.