Two indefatigable campaigners for medicine that is actually evidence-based challenge the Lancet

http://healthinsightuk.org/2019/02/11/latest-statin-scam-mis-selling-them-to-pensioners/

"A recent article in the Lancet, widely covered in the press, claimed that if everyone in the UK aged 75+ took statins, deaths from heart disease would plummet and 8,000 lives would be saved. Shockingly, because the Lancet is a respected medical journal, it’s nonsense. Just the latest campaign by the massive statin scam...."

 

Good to see Jerome back. Could we interest him once gain on our ME issue with HRA, BMJ and Lancet?


"Shockingly, because the Lancet is a respected medical journal, it’s nonsense. ......

Jerome Burne is the editor of HealthInsightUK. He is an award-winning journalist who has been specialising in medicine and health for the last 10 years

Reading the points raised here, to save people time and effort!;

'Groundhog moment', '...

here were the old familiar claims that have long looked dodgy..'

critique was showing that the claim of 8,000 lives saved was quite simply a ‘falsehood’. She points out that in the text of the article, as opposed to the abstract, the difference between those getting statins and those who didn’t was said to be ‘not statistically significant’., ..........

A simple but effective way of showing the benefits vs risks of a drug is to use a calculation known as NNT (Numbers Needed to Treat) vs. NNH (Numbers Needed to Harm). A website called www.thennt.com calculates these using results from lots of trials...........

All the RCT’s funded by statin companies, on which the unit bases all its many positive studies, are held by the CTT and are not available for any independent researchers to analyse. This is contrary to the standards of transparency over data, widely agreed to be essential if research is to be considered reliable.......

Malcolm illustrates the close connection between the research and the industry with the full ‘conflict of interests’ list included with the Lancet article. Out of 23 authors, five have nothing to disclose, the rest have all received payments from at least one drug company; two each have financial links with 14.......

He also picks up basic flaws in the study that seriously undermine its conclusions. It is described as a ‘meta-analysis of twenty-eight RCTs’ but Malcolm shows that half of them can’t possibly tell you if statins save the lives of 75-year-olds or not......

The final point Malcolm makes about the Lancet analysis is a sophisticated one about how you do clinical trials.....

But it is important to appreciate that the Lancet paper can be seen as part of the wider statin project, designed solely to get as many people on the drugs as possible by replacing science with marketing.