Tag Archives: BMJ

Is medical research now beyond redemption?

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Below, I have copied an entire article from the BMJ, written by Dr Des Spence, who is a fellow Scottish GP. We communicate from time to time, and share a general view that medicine is heading in a very unfortunate direction with overdiagnosis and over-treatment/polypharmacy becoming a massive problem.

This is driven, in the main part, by the pharmaceutical industry. An industry that would like to see the entire population of the world taking medication every day….. forever. To achieve this they have, effectively, grabbed hold of medical research and twisted it to their own ends.

Anyway, please read this article. It encapsulates much of what I feel, and I believe it needs a wider audience [I have added a few comments into the text to ensure that I am not breaching copyright]

Evidence based medicine (EBM) wrong footed the drug industry for a while in the 1990s. We could fend off the army of pharmaceutical representatives because often their promotional material was devoid of evidence. But the drug industry came to realise that EBM was an opportunity rather than a threat. Research, especially when published in a prestigious journal, was worth more than thousands of sales representatives. Today EBM is a loaded gun at clinicians’ heads. “You better do as the evidence says,” it hisses, leaving no room for discretion or judgment. EBM is now the problem, fuelling overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

[This is now a major problem for GPs who are increasingly measured and monitored, and funded, according to how accurately we follow guidelines mk comment]

You see, without so called “evidence” there is no seat at the guideline table. This is the fundamental “commissioning bias,” the elephant in the room, because the drug industry controls and funds most research. So the drug industry and EBM have set about legitimising illegitimate diagnoses and then widening drug indications, and now doctors can prescribe a pill for every ill.

[As you can imagine, this makes it difficult not to prescribe statins mk comment]

The billion prescriptions a year in England in 2012, up 66% in one decade, do not reflect a true increased burden of illness nor an ageing population, just polypharmacy supposedly based on evidence. The drug industry’s corporate mission is to make us all sick however well we feel. [Absolutely true mk comment] As for EBM screening programmes, these are the combine harvester of wellbeing, producing bails of overdiagnosis and misery.

Corruption in clinical research is sponsored by billion dollar marketing razzmatazz and promotion passed off as postgraduate education. By contrast, the disorganised protesters have but placards and a couple of felt tip pens to promote their message, and no one wants to listen to tiresome naysayers anyway.

[Speaking as a tiresome naysayer I could not agree more mk comment]

How many people care that the research pond is polluted, with fraud, sham diagnosis, short term data, poor regulation, surrogate ends, questionnaires that can’t be validated, and statistically significant but clinically irrelevant outcomes? Medical experts who should be providing oversight are on the take. Even the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the Cochrane Collaboration do not exclude authors with conflicts of interest, who therefore have predetermined agendas. The current incarnation of EBM is corrupted, let down by academics and regulators alike. [If anyone has any suggestion how to improve regulation, please let me know mk comment]

What do we do? We must first recognise that we have a problem. Research should focus on what we don’t know. We should study the natural history of disease, research non-drug based interventions, question diagnostic criteria, tighten the definition of competing interests, and research the actual long term benefits of drugs while promoting intellectual scepticism. If we don’t tackle the flaws of EBM there will be a disaster, but I fear it will take a disaster before anyone will listen.

[There have already been many disasters, but nobody has yet listened mk comment]

Original article can be found here

Sorry about the intrusive comments, but I don’t want the BMJ jumping up and down on me – especially as they are the only major journal that seems keen to criticize the industry.

What Des Spence is saying, is what I have been saying for some time now. Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) could have been a great thing – so long as it was not enforced too rigidly. But the evidence has been manipulated and corrupted all the way along the line. EBM is now almost completely broken as a tool to help treat patients.

Some years ago I stated that I no longer believe in many research papers that I read. All I tend to do is look at the authors, look at the conflicts of interest, look at the companies who sponsored the study, and I know exactly what the research is going to say – before I have even read the paper.

I have also virtually given up on references. What is the point, when you can find a reference to support any point of view that you want to promote? Frankly, I do not know where the truth resides any more. I wish to use evidence, and the results of clinical studies, but I always fear that I am standing on quicksand when I do so.

We are at a crisis point. Medical research today (in areas where there is money to be made) is almost beyond redemption. If I had my way I would close down pubmed, burn all the journals, and start again, building up a solid database of facts that we can actually rely on – free from commercial bias. But this is never, ever, going to happen.

Happy New Year.

 

How Risky Is A Risk?

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[I was contemplating risk the other day, when someone forwarded me an article I wrote a couple of years ago on risk. I think it is still highly relevant to what is happening today with the mangling of medical statistics]

I have only just recovered from the idea that everyone in the whole world over the age of fifty-five should spend the rest of their lives on six different medications, all stuck together in one great big pill. The following was headline from a study in the BMJ.

‘Polypill—A Statin plus 3 Blood Pressure Drugs plus Folic Acid plus Aspirin. Authors claim Polypill would reduce risk of dying from coronary heart disease by 80%. The authors of the polypill article in the BMJ made the claim that taking their polypill would reduce the risk of dying of coronary heart disease (CHD) by 80%.’

You may have seen the non-story about the, yet to be marketed polypill, peddled in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). I was stimulated to look again at the concept of risk.

Whether or not you believe their figures—and I don’t—I sense that this figure of 80% would be taken by most people to mean that eighty out of one hundred people would be saved from death if they took this magic tablet. But this figure, if true, could only possibly be a relative risk reduction. And a relative risk reduction means almost nothing, by itself.

However, because everyone’s eyes glaze over whenever you start talking about statistics, most researchers manage to get away with using relative risk reduction figures when, in reality, they should be shot for doing so. Now, here’s a challenge. The challenge to make a short article about statistics interesting. Okay, that’s not possible. But maybe a little bit interesting?

You must know the time period, and the absolute risk, for the relative risk to have any meaning

When you talk about a risk, you need to know the absolute risk of a thing happening. For example, the risk of getting struck by lightning. I don’t actually know what this risk is, but I would imagine it is about one in five million. But again, that figure means little unless you put a time scale on it. Is this a one in five million risk over a hundred years, or one year, or a day? If you don’t put a time scale in, you can claim pretty much anything you like.

For example an astronomer could attempt to shock you by stating that ‘The Earth will be hit by a big Asteroid. This is one hundred per-cent certain.’ – stunning announcement from A.N. Astronomer. Read all about it.  And of course, this is true. The Earth will be hit by a big Asteroid, sometime in the next three billion years or so. The odds ratio for this event is 1 = 100% certain. I am even willing to take a bet on it. What you probably want to know is however, is, what is the likelihood of this happening in my lifetime. Sorry, no idea.

Anyway, I hope this makes it clear that you must define risk in two ways, the possibility of the nasty thing happening, and the time period during which it is likely that the thing will happen. With lightening strikes, I would guess this is about a one in five million risk, over a five year period. Not high.

However, whilst the time factor is important, people don’t just bend statistics by ignoring the time factor. What also happens is that people inflate the risk by using relative instead of absolute risks.

For example, the chances of dying of lung cancer, for a non-smoker, are about 0.1% (lifetime risk). If, however, you live with a heavy smoker, your chances will increase to about 0.15%. (These figures are for illustration only, and are not completely accurate).

Now, you can report this in two ways. You can state that passive smoking can increase the risk of lung cancer by 0.05% – one in two thousand. Or, you can state that passive smoking increases the risk of lung cancer by fifty per cent (0.15% vs 0.1%). Both figures are correct. One is increase in absolute risk, the second the increase in relative risk.

If you are an anti-smoking zealot, then I would imagine you would prefer to highlight the second figure. The relative risk figure. And when it comes to reducing cardiovascular risk, exactly the same procedure is used (in reverse).

Let’s say that the chance of dying of CHD over the next five years, in a healthy fifty-five year-old, is 1%. By reducing this risk to 0.2%, you can claim to have reduced the relative risk of dying of CHD by 80%. The absolute risk reduction is 0.8%. Mangling statistics is easy when you know how. It’s even fun.

Anyway, now you know the difference between a relative risk and an absolute risk, and I hope this makes it easier for you to hack your way through the misinformation that spews forth from the great medical research machine.

By the way, I believe the Polypill will achieve a 0.00% absolute and relative risk reduction. But we shall see.

 

 

Data Manipulation – Gosh Really

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Now that Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Pharma has come out, exposing the fact that much medical research is controlled by, and manipulated by, the pharmaceutical industry, I thought I should revisit a short article I wrote six years ago:

 

Gosh, Really, You Don’t Say:

Sometimes you read something of such blinding obviousness (if that is actually a word), that you wonder why anyone even bothered writing it at all. You know the sort of thing – ‘constant criticism of children does not lead to a sense of self-worth.’ ‘A centralized command economy does not create wealth for citizens.’

But the blindingly obvious can be critically important depending on who says it. I can bang on and on about the fact that medical journals have basically turned themselves into advertorials for the pharmaceutical industry, and be readily dismissed as a fringe lunatic.

However when Richard Smith, editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) for many years who resigned last year, says it, then it would seem that even the cosy ‘establishment’ may be starting to feel the first cold fingers of doubt creeping in. Perhaps things really have started to go too far. So read and enjoy a short section from an article in the BMJ, 21st May 2005.

“Medical journals are no more than ‘an extension of the marketing arm of pharmaceutical companies’ because a large proportion of their revenue comes from drug advertisements and reprints of company funded trials, claims former BMJ editor, Richard Smith.

“Dr. Smith argues that although medical journals make a sizeable income from drug advertisements this is the least of their ‘corrupting form of dependence’ on the industry, since the advertisements are ‘there for all to see and criticize’.

“Dr Smith’s strongest criticism is levelled at the fact that journals publish clinical trials that are funded by the industry. Unlike advertisements, trials are seen by readers as the highest form of evidence, he says. Trials funded by drug companies rarely produce unfavourable results and make up between two thirds and three quarters of the trials published in key journals.

“The potential profits from reprints of such a trial can run to $1m (£0.5m; €0.8m), says Dr Smith. And it is this potential income that can have the biggest corrupting influence on a journal because many editors are charged with ensuring their journal makes a profit.

“Editors may be confronted by ‘a frighteningly stark conflict of interest’, writes Dr Smith They may be forced to choose between publishing a trial that will bring $100,000 of profit or meet their end of year budget by making a member of staff redundant.”

 

Will this article in the BMJ change anything?….. You have GOT to be joking……

And you know what changed in the last six years. You got it. Nothing.

Losing Faith

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‘Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.’ J Ionnadis.

Recently, I have taken to looking at the headlines of various medical studies are groaning. You may have seen the hype surrounding a ‘low carb’ diet study in the BMJ. One headline, plucked from many, stated that ‘Heart disease linked to low-carb diets.’

Perhaps I should take such studies more seriously. After all, the BMJ is one of the most respected and highly ranked medical journals in the world. It is not the Fortean Times or the National Enquirer. So, one would hope that it prints things that should be serious and taken seriously.  I wish.

Instead, my first thought was. This is bollocks. I know that this is rubbish. But, frankly, can I be bothered to read the damn thing myself, to prove to myself it is rubbish. I immediately knew it was rubbish because I have been studying nutrition and health for nearly thirty years, and if there were anything inherently unhealthy about a low carb, high protein diet, I would know it. And I don’t.

I also know the context of such studies. Mainstream medical thinking has been high carb, low everything else for the past thirty years. It is unshakable dogma, maintained in the face of a relentless bombardment of evidence. When anyone, such as Atkins, dares to take on this established dogma, they are ruthlessly attacked, personal, professionally and scientifically.

On the other hand, when anyone produces a paper supporting the high carb, low everything else, dogma, it will be uncritically supported, waved through peer-review, then published. ‘See, we were right all along. Low carb diets kill you. Nyah, nyah, nyah…..you’re not singing any more etc.’ Such is the world of medical research today.

The decline of honesty in science

Anyone who has been a scientist for more than 20 years will realize that there has been a progressive decline in the honesty of communications between scientists, between scientists and their institutions, and between scientists and their institutions and the outside world.

Yet real science must be an arena where truth is the rule; or else the activity simply stops being science and becomes something else: Zombie science. Zombie science is a science that is dead, but is artificially kept moving by a continual infusion of funding. From a distance Zombie science look like the real thing, the surface features of a science are in place – white coats, laboratories, computer programming, PhDs, papers, conference, prizes, etc. But the Zombie is not interested in the pursuit of truth – its citations are externally-controlled and directed at non-scientific goals, and inside the Zombie everything is rotten…..

Scientists are usually too careful and clever to risk telling outright lies, but instead they push the envelope of exaggeration, selectivity and distortion as far as possible. And tolerance for this kind of untruthfulness has greatly increased over recent years. So it is now routine for scientists deliberately to ‘hype’ the significance of their status and performance and ‘spin’ the importance of their research.

Bruce Charlton: Professor of Theoretical Medicine

Getting back to the study, I did read it, it was rubbish. Luckily, others too read it, and there has pretty much been a barrage of criticism (none of which will ever reach the media, of course). Here is what  Dr Yoni Freehof had to say on the New England Journal of Medicine discussion forum. http://www.cardioexchange.org/voices/what-reading-that-low-carb-gives-you-heart-disease-paper-actually-told-me/

‘…..So, to review: The authors of this paper are  basing their 15-years-worth of conclusions off of a single, solitary — and clearly inaccurate — baseline food-frequency questionnaire; they didn’t control for clearly known smack-you-in-the-face dietary confounders; they found just a miniscule absolute increase in risk; and the diet they are reporting on can’t even be fairly referred to as a low-carbohydrate diet.

Useful?  Conclusive?  Press worthy?

It gets worse.

The BMJ didn’t just publish a completely useless paper, they gave this very clear, yet completely non-evidence-based, advice to clinicians in their accompanying editorial:

Despite the popularity of these diets, clinicians should probably advise against their use for long-term control of body weight.

Worse still, highly reputable, socially networked curators of medical information tweeted the resultant media stories as relevant, and even Physician’s First Watch — a news alert from Journal Watch and the publishers of the New England Journal of Medicine — reported it as valuable to scores of physician subscribers who trust JW to keep them abreast of the latest important journal studies.’

He didn’t like. I didn’t like it. No-one who knows anything about this area liked it. It was Zombie Science, to go along with an ever-increasing pile of Zombie Science. I am losing faith in medical research.