She would be an excellent candidate for a trial of a drug to "treat" the symptoms, like "cholesterol", of a self-destructive lifestyle. Such people are beloved of drug dealers and trialist doctors on their payrolls because they are "high risk" and have high rates of "events" (i.e. artery bypass, heart attack and death) allowing investigators to publish papers faster and drug dealers to sell more drugs. Thus, all testing of drugs for lifestyle diseases necessitates conflict of interest. To insist that such people change their habits first would reduce "events", most of which are non-fatal, and prolong trials for so long that the high-paid "trialists" would die of old age before enough "events" had been registered to be statistcally significant. So NO trial of drugs for diseases of lifestyle has ever made a serious attempt to change lifestyles before trying drugs. All such trials were and are, therefore, UNETHICAL. Reports of the results of such trials should be retracted by the journals involved and the results should be ignored by all doctors. All such ongoing trials should be halted immediately.
Posted by Colin Rose on December 13, 2008
Posted in atherosclerosis, cardiology, cholesterol, drug marketing, professionalism, statins | Tagged: bribe, cholesterol, college des medecins, drug marketing, drugs, ezetrol, Jacques Genest, Jerome Kassirer, Lipitor, Rx&D, tiazac | Leave a Comment »
