It seems the much touted DBPC trials on drugs may not be all they are pumped up to be! ([url]See HP Latest News[/url])
See what [url]Mike Adams says[/url]. Here's an extract:
"... if there are no regulations or rules regarding placebo, then none of the placebo-controlled clinical trials are scientifically valid.
"It's amazing how medical scientists will get rough and tough when attacking <a class="go2wpf-bbcode" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="homeopathy">homeopathy, touting how their own <a class="go2wpf-bbcode" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="medicine">medicine is "based on the gold standard of [url]scientific evidence[/url]! and yet when it really comes down to it, their scientific <a class="go2wpf-bbcode" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="evidence">evidence is just a jug of <a class="go2wpf-bbcode" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="quackery">quackery mixed with a pinch of wishful thinking and a wisp of pseudoscientific gobbledygook, all framed in the language of scientism by members of the FDA who wouldn't recognize real science if they tripped and fell into a vat full of it.
"Big Pharma and the FDA have based their entire system of scientific evidence on a placebo fraud! And if the placebo isn't a placebo, then the scientific evidence isn't scientific."
I have been more than a little suspicious for some time. I remember when it was said that vitamin E caused heart failure (?2003/4) - when it is an antioxidant that helps stabilise/heal the problem. Patrick Holford rang up the professor in America whose name was on the trial papers to ask a few details - he vociferously denied he was involved in the trial and found that his name had been attached to the trial without his knowledge. That was not the end of the story - it turned out that the patients all had chronic heart failure anyway, and that the form of vitamin E used was the artificial form which doesn't work anyway, and it was given in a dose so low that even if it had been the right form then it would have had little effect on the patients and that the results were almost insignificantly different. So the results were plastered all over the daily papers: Vitamin E Kills!:( It has since been picked up by the Chochrane Library as 'gospel' without any reference to the defects of the trial!
So much for objective scientific studies!
I find this thread interesting because double blind placebo trails had been dumped a long time ago as being unethical.
Double blind trails are important and still go on, but the use of placebos fell away because of the methods the big pharma were using to place placebos. It was an out and out scandal that placebos were being used in the USA on blacks, and later in developing countries.
Therefore in drug trials the use of placebos actually has human rights implications.
So if there is a stardard for placebos or not....... They are not used as much in drug development as some would like us to believe.
I would urge anyone who is interested reasearch is conducted to read some of the white papers to see how things are actually done. I think this is also more important when a lot of public health policy decisions are being made on the outcomes of meta research.
If as supporters of CAM we are going to argue against our critics, it's best not to misrepresent them as they do us.
Myarka.
I find this thread interesting because double blind placebo trails had been dumped a long time ago as being unethical.
Since when Myarka? It is not so very long since I was at college and these were cited as the 'gold standard' for scientific trials!
Double blind trails are important and still go on, but the use of placebos fell away because of the methods the big pharma were using to place placebos. It was an out and out scandal that placebos were being used in the USA on blacks, and later in developing countries.
Therefore in drug trials the use of placebos actually has human rights implications..
I quite agree!
I would urge anyone who is interested reasearch is conducted to read some of the white papers to see how things are actually done. I think this is also more important when a lot of public health policy decisions are being made on the outcomes of meta research..
Could you point me in the direction of some of these white papers please?
If as supporters of CAM we are going to argue against our critics, it's best not to misrepresent them as they do us.
Absolutely! I do however believe Natural News (Mike Adams) does his research well - and I was pointing the reader in his direction.
Since when Myarka? It is not so very long since I was at college and these were cited as the 'gold standard' for scientific trials!
Both the Belmont report (USA), and the Hensinki agreement (Europe) laydown guidelines for ethical research. The view is that placebos should only be used where there is no existing treatment.
Could you point me in the direction of some of these white papers please?
The trip database references all this work, just search on the subject you're interested in and it will take you to the research:
http://www.tripdatabase.com/index.html
HTH,
Myarka
Unfortunately, it is widely perceived that placebos are not used because they show up the true lack of value of many interventions.
Who would volunteer to be untreated for cancer for the sake of science? But if we don't leave some people untreated, how do we know that the therapy is really helping people and not actually killing them? The answer is we don't.
The last trial of a vaccine against inert placebos was for BCG, and the outcome was that with the actual vaccine you were more likely to get tuberculosios.
Hence, when they test modern medication, they always test it against another medication, it may appear effective against something worse than useless. Vaccines are tested against other vaccines, and against the whole toxic coctail in a vaccine but without an 'active' ingredient'. So if a vaccine for flu is more effective against an injection of toxic rubbish, then it is deemed useful. Of course they don't test effectiveness anymore, just whether antibodies are present, which is not a good correlate for actual 'immunity', but good enough to sell billions of dollars' worth. So this is flawed on several levels, but that's another story.
But cynicism about big pharma's intentions aside, if placebos are unethical because that would be denying treatment to participants of a study, that logically assumes that the drug they are testing must be better than nothing. The trouble is, that if they don't test them against a placebo, how do they know? If they begin by assuming that a drug will always be more effective to the extent that it should not be tested against placebo, then we can assume anything. At that stage we're into the realm of pseudoscience and foregone trial outcomes, which is no way to do science.