The Slowness of Science Meets the Lightning Pace of Technology
The point of our recent digression into the philosophy of science is to highlight that doing great science is hard. It takes time. Doing great science about human beings and health — especially to assess long term health benefits and costs — is also incredibly time consuming and expensive. Human beings are complex creatures. […]
Many Open Questions about Lipitor Side Effects
Frustratingly, even the most respected filters of scientific information about statins can contradict themselves and contradict one another. Questions abound about these drugs, and people want and need clear answers: Who should take statins and under what circumstances? Do statins actually reduce heart attacks and other coronary events? How much unbiased (that is, not […]
How to Be a Better-Educated Patient – Part II
Part 2 Many people display an unfortunate lack of skepticism towards medical and nutritional authorities. Yet it is also very easy to swing the pendulum too far in the other direction and embrace all manner of medical woo-woo. Many skeptics of the “malevolent cholesterol hypothesis,” for instance, put forward some pretty strange (and […]
Doctors Not Very Impressed with the “Statins for Everyone” Message
Author and blogger, Jimmy Moore, together with Duke University physician, Dr. Eric Westman, analyzed the research literature on the relationship between cholesterol levels and health in their bestselling 2013 ebook, “Cholesterol Clarity: What the HDL is Wrong with My Numbers?” Moore and Westman discuss a January 2009 study published in the American Heart Journal, which […]
Chapter 8: The Birth of the Dialysis Industry
Dr. William J. Kolff, who collaborated with Dr. Robert Jarvik to build the first artificial heart, also pioneered the kidney dialysis process. Working in the Netherlands during World War II, Dr. Kolff’s first dialysis machine was, by modern standards, a ghastly contraption. The machine pumped a salt water solution through tubes made of sausage casing […]
A Horrendously Inaccurate “Scientific” Paper
To combat this “bad press” Risperdal had been receiving in the scientific literature, J&J helped publish a paper, “Prolactin levels during long-term Risperidone treatment in children and adolescents,” in the Journal of Clinical Psychology (Nov 2003). Clinicians examined five trials — three long-term and two short-term — that covered 700 subjects. Their conclusion made […]
Another, Deeper Problem (The Root of the Risperdal Debacle?)
A subtler problem may be at the root of why drug companies like J&J do what they do. This issue has little to do with the development and approval of drugs and everything to do with the accelerated speed of technology. Doing Good Science Vs. Doing Rushed Science What is science? What does it do […]
Deputy Chairman of British Medical Association “Hugely Concerned about the New Advice on Statins”
On March 3, 2014, Dr. Kailash Chand, the Deputy Chairman of the British Medical Association, came out against the statin makers. He talked about his personal experience on statins with the UK paper, Sunday Express: “After a few weeks I started getting awful muscle aches which were almost everywhere and which would wake me up […]
Criticism Vs. Conventional Wisdom about Lipitor and Statins
In an e-book that our firm recently wrote about the side effects caused by the kidney dialysis drug, GranuFlo — “How the Largest Operator of Dialysis Centers Kept GranuFlo on the Market … Even After Reports of Consumer Harm Emerged” — we reflected in depth on the historical roots of medical ineptitude. Briefly: a […]
How Come Nobody Stopped Fresenius?
Where were regulatory agencies in all this? How did Fresenius get away with its behavior? In a New York Times article, “Dialysis Company’s Failure to Warn of Product Risk Draws Inquiry,” reporter Andrew Pollack wrote that “the Food and Drug Administration is investigating whether the nation’s largest operator of dialysis centers violated federal regulations by […]