drug research | The Ethical Nag

As a person who’s worked in the field of public relations for decades, I can usually smell a spin a mile away. Take the classic Torches of Liberty parade in 1929 in which a crowd of women marched through Manhattan smoking Lucky Strike cigarettes. The spin? A Big Tobacco-funded women’s rights event that ‘proved’ women could be liberated enough to smoke in public – as long as they smoked Luckies.

Or the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty ads, featuring plus-size models shilling Dove’s skin creams. The spin? We’re beautiful just the way we are (except, of course, for all that ugly cellulite that Dove products can help us get rid of!)

According to a study presented at the International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication in Vancouver, it seems Big Pharma has been equally busy doing its own creative spinning of its research results published in medical journals. Continue reading →

In the wonderful world of modern medicine, there are pesky little exceptions to every rule. For example, cardiologists tell us that people with high LDL (bad) cholesterol numbers are more at risk for heart attack. Yet we know that not everybody with dangerously high cholesterol levels suffers a heart attack, and not all heart attack patients have high cholesterol. In France, cardiologists puzzle over the “French Paradox” in which French citizens who eat more high-fat dairy foods, smoke more, and exercise less than all of their European neighbours have one of the lowest rates of heart disease in Europe.

This is what statisticians call intermediate or surrogate endpoints. It means you can’t really predict the final consequences based on how things are going along the way.

Consider the 2010 World Cup in South Africa for a similar illustration of intermediate endpoints. Sports pundits, for example, insist that, generally speaking, the team that can maintain possession of the soccer ball for most of the match will be the team that ultimately wins. Makes sense, doesn’t it? However, ball possession alone may not actually mean much at all to the end result. Here’s why: Continue reading →