Bad Pharma
We like to imagine that medicine is based on evidence and the results of fair tests. In reality, those tests are often profoundly flawed. We like to imagine that doctors are familiar with the research literature about a drug, when in reality much of the research is hidden from them by drug companies. We like to imagine that doctors are impartially educated, when in reality much of their education is funded by the pharmaceutical industry. We like to imagine that regulators let only effective drugs onto the market, when in reality they approve useless drugs, with data on side effects casually withheld from doctors and patients. All these problems have been shielded from public scrutiny because they're too complex to capture in a sound bite. But Ben Goldacre shows that the true scale of this murderous disaster fully reveals itself only when the details are untangled. He believes we should all be able to understand precisely how data manipulation works and how research misconduct on a global scale affects us. This book reveals a shockingly broken system and calls for something to be done.--From publisher description.
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What Hacker News says
- Its not diffcult to imagine.
This will open the door for even more Big Pharma abuses.
Bad Pharma - How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients - Ben Goldacre - (2012)
Bad pharma - how medicine is broken and how we can fix it - Ben Goldacre - (2013)
Pharmageddon - Healy, David - (2012)
- > This seems like another 'solution' that really only addresses how the diseases manifest but not the root cause.
If you read the article, you'd see that one of the features is that in the vast majority of cases, the B-cells return, but not the B-cells that were causing the immunodeficiency
quote: "Once injected into the hosts, the CAR T cells got to work. They multiplied and targeted and destroyed all the B cells — including pathogenic cells linked to the autoimmune conditions. The bioengineered T cells survived for weeks in the recipients before largely vanishing. Eventually, new healthy B cells returned, but no pathogenic ones did. A similar response has been observed in people with autoimmune conditions who received CAR T cells derived from their own cells."
My point being that the immune system appears to remains functional with this treatment, differentiating it from the clinical therapies that are available to you currently.
Speaking as someone who has also been let down by the medical system, but also who wouldn't be alive without it: I agree that Big Pharma is a problem (anyone disagreeing with that is arguing against the scientific evidence -- Ben Goldacre's book Bad Pharma is a good introduction to the problems with the industry), and that in the gross case they are lacking financial incentives. At the same time, this does not mean that the clinical therapies we have or are developing, are utterly ineffective.
- Yeah almost every nonfiction book is like this which makes me hate reading them (plus half the stuff in psychology/behavioral economics books is unreplicated fabulation).
Small subthread derailment - nonfiction books which are worth the full length. I'll start:
The Making of the Atomic Bomb; Gödel, Escher, Bach; The Ancestor's Tale; Bad Pharma
- Ben Goldacre's book 'Bad Pharma' has a good discussion around this, especially in terms of caveats and gotchas to watch out for with such studies.
It might be more 'lay person' than you are looking for, but it's an excellent read for myriad other reasons, so you wouldn't be wasting your time (IMO).
- Other studies, with a larger sample of studies, found a moderate certainty of effect even when controlling for a study which later removed.
https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/fulltext/2021/...
Another study from Queen Mary University also found certainty of effect
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353195913_Bayesian_...
Study in Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Medicine shows certainty of effect.
https://www.apjtm.org/article.asp?issn=1995-7645;year=2021;v...
I could go on. To really understand what is happening in relation to Ivermectin I can highly recommend Ben Goldacres book Bad Pharma..it shows in detail exactly what we are seeing happen with ivermectin.
There is a significant financial interest in having ivermectin perceived as ineffective. Firstly, if it works it makes the emergency use authorisation for the vaccines look quite precarious. Secondly, and probably more likely, there are novel therapies being developed for Covid right now. Nasal sprays. Anti virals.
They are patented. Ivermectin is not - it's post patent and can be manufacured by multiple companies. Merck who manufacture ivermectin themselves have a new anti viral they hope to bring to market.
If ivermectin - a $3 treatment - proves to be effective then the emergency use Authorization for novel Covid therapies goes out the window.
When we are looking at meta analysis that take about 20% of the available studies and conclude 'inconclusive' we should be mindful that there's a massive financial interest for this. Science works. But like everything else, if you influence how science is funded you influence the results it finds.
The cat is out of the bag on ivermectin. Its already being used in india (where I am) and where the second wave was brought under control without vaccines. There was just 5% vaccine penetration at the peak of second wave but ivermectin started to get administered at that time in delhi.
You'll hear more about the mega doses of horse paste. Its in super high concentration since....it's for horses. In the UK it's not even imported in tablet 12mg form. Hence the stupid situation in which people desperately try to get it via vets and the dosage is way out.
At 12mg doses it's very well tolerated. I should know since I use it india the moment I feel I have any symptoms. 18 months and so far so good. I am just one person of course but I know many many others who have been prescribed it when they got sick and they then recovered.
Science works but financial interests influence what does and does not publish.
- If you want to see an index of meta studies, you can check out the Cochrane Collaboration: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/
It’s mentioned in the book Bad Pharma which has a pretty good breakdown of how drug marketing to consumers and medical professionals distorts decision making.
