You know how much I loathe “evidence-based medicine.” It’s not because I have anything against scientific research. The problem is, the kinds of trials the mainstream relies on as “evidence” are basically rigged. Pharmaceutical companies fund most of the research. So, in essence, they’re manufacturing the evidence AND the “solution.”
Then doctors are forced to follow these “proven” protocols — or risk being sued for malpractice. So Big Pharma wins both ways.
But more and more people are finally starting to catch on to this corruption. In fact, I just read an article in the Economist that said the entire evidence-base for new medicines is flawed.
All because Big Pharma has been hiding critical information for years.
The Economist article revealed hard evidence against drug companies showing how they’ve duped the public for years by cherry picking the results of clinical trials. It appears that many studies with unfavorable outcomes got swept under the rug. In fact, half of these clinical trials with adverse results never saw the light of day.
When unfavorable clinical trials aren’t published, it gives the public a distorted perception of how safe and effective drugs, medical devices, and even surgical procedures actually are. Conventional doctors are none the wiser either, because they rely only on published results.
So who knows how much harm this dangerous game of hide-and-seek has done?
Back in 2007, the U.S. government tried to deal with this lack of transparency by creating the website ClinicalTrials.gov and requiring all clinical trials to register when a study first begins.All results were to be published after one year, regardless of the study outcome. And researchers who didn’t comply were supposed to face stiff fines.
This is all good in theory. But what’s really happened over the last few decades is a whole different story.
The New England Journal of Medicine did a thorough search of the clinicaltrials.gov website in early 2015 to see how many trials were being reported within the 1 year deadline. Astoundingly, they found only 17% of trials funded by drug companies were published.
The worst offenders were actually government agencies and academic institutions, which only published 5.7% of trials. And the esteemed National Institutes of Health (NIH) only reported findings on 8.1% of the trials they funded. And guess how many times the FDA has put the hammer down on offenders?
Of course, you have to question the motives of the academic researchers here too. After all, it is much more advantageous for them to publish studies with glowing outcomes. Not only does it bolster their credentials, but it also puts them in the pipeline for new grant money.
The other culprits in these cover-ups are the medical journals themselves. Journals are notorious for favoring studies with positive outcomes (unless it’s about vitamins, of course).
The long and short of this mess is most of the new drugs on the market today are likely to have a few skeletons rattling around in their closets. It’s anyone’s guess how many.
So, why should you be concerned? Because big pharma is manipulating medicine and your government is allowing it to happen. They are dictating how your doctor treats you. And they’re pushing potentially dangerous drugs through the approval pipeline in order to cash in on them—with no regard for your safety or well-being.
Want more proof? All you have to do is turn on the TV and see the ads for lawsuits against drugs like Vioxx and Avandia that shot to stardom without being fully vetted.
It’s bad enough these so called “miracle” drugs have brought about physical harm to the public. But they’ve cost us dearly in the pocketbook too.
For instance, the US government spent $1.5 billion stockpiling Tamiflu, thinking they were getting ahead of the anticipated outbreak of the swine flu (which never came, by the way). Big pharma promised the drug could help prevent hospitalizations and deaths from this flu. The problem with this hasty decision was, at the time, less than half of the trial data about Tamiflu had been published. Fast forward to 2013, when more results were analyzed. Serious questions were raised about just how effective Tamiflu really was. (Hint: not very.)
And while we are on the subject, let me take a second here to remind you that flu vaccines aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, either. I never get flu shots, and I don’t get sick, either. In chapter one of my book The Natural Healing Master List, I go through a comprehensive list of the best natural approaches for protecting your immune system during cold and flu season.
Back when I was in medical school, Big Pharma didn’t fund clinical trials. In fact, drug company money was looked down upon. Now, there isn’t an institution in this country that doesn’t rely on Big Pharma’s money to survive.
So it’s quite possible your doctor only knows part of the story about that new drug he is prescribing for you. That’s why, on the rare occasions when I do prescribe drugs, I always opt for ones that have been around for a long time. Not only have older drugs have gone through more clinical trials, but they’ve also stood the test of time in terms of patient safety. If your doctor prescribes a new drug, ask if you can try older one first.
And in the meantime, there is a ray of hope that change may be on the way. An international campaign called AllTrials has been established to compel researchers to be completely transparent in their clinical trials and publish all of the results. And a few companies have begun backpedaling and are starting to open up their archives. There’s still a long way to go. But you can sign the AllTrials petition and follow the campaign’s progress by visiting www.alltrials.net.
Resources:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0033655/
http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/information_h1n1_virus_qa.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/pastseasons/0910season.htm
http://www.forbes.com/sites/harlankrumholz/2013/01/08/the-myth-of-tamiflu-5-things-you-should-know/
http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20091209/tamiflu-effectiveness-doubted
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