Tag: clinical trials
FDA approval of drugs and transparency in clinical trial results
Note: The reason that I am posting today rather than my usual Monday slot is because the article I discuss here was embargoed until last night. Consequently, I asked Harriet if she would trade days with me this week, and she was kind enough to do so. One thing that science relies on almost absolutely is transparency. Because one of the most...
Science, Reason, Ethics, and Modern Medicine, Part 2: the Tortured Logic of David Katz
In Part 1 of this series* I asserted that a physician’s primary ethical responsibility is to honesty and integrity, which in turn must be largely based on science and reason (I apologize if that sounded preachy; if there had been more time I might have couched it in more congenial terms). I mentioned the fallacious reasoning whereby proponents of implausible medical claims (IMC) point to real and...
Homeopathy and Evidence-Based Medicine: Back to the Future – Part I
Either homeopathy works or controlled trials don’t! —Scottish homeopath David Reilly at the 2001 Harvard Medical School Complementary and Integrative Medicine Conference. Reilly based that assertion on his own series of four small studies of homeopathic treatments of hay fever, asthma, and allergic rhinitis, the outcomes of which had been inconsistent and largely subjective. (1) Later he explained that small-minded skeptics in...