New book exposes Big Pharma’s twisted statistics
You’ve probably heard the old Mark Twain saying that there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Well, according to a new book, there’s plenty of lying going on when Big Pharma presents its statistics.
The book, KNOW YOUR CHANCES: UNDERSTANDING HEALTH STATISTICS, spells out what I’ve been telling you for years – that most health statistics that you hear bandied about in the media need to be taken with a mountain of salt grains.
The book’s three authors, Drs. Lisa Schwartz, H. Gilbert Welch, and Steven Woloshin, describe the many ways drug companies can take statistics, and twist them in braids and tie them in knots to say exactly what they want. It’s a primer on a subject that the American consumer sorely needs: a healthy dose of skepticism about health news and pharmaceutical advertising.
It’s about time.
The book catalogues many of the questionable statistics that are routinely used to tout the glories of pharmaceuticals. I’m happy to say that the authors even took aim at one of the sacred cows of pharmaceuticals: cholesterol-lowering statin drugs.
They point out that the ads for the statin drug Zocor, for example, claim that the drug can reduce your risk of death by heart attack by 42 percent. The authors deconstruct the statistics that helped to create that sexy, attention-getting percentage. Take a look:
The Zocor numbers are based on a study in which just 111 heart disease sufferers out of about 2,000 who used Zocor died of a heart attack. Meanwhile, 189 of the placebo-taking control group of about 2,000 patients met a similar fate. So when you compare the death rates for Zocor-takers directly to that of the placebo group, the actual “reduction” of the risk of heart attack death between the two is a paltry 3.5 percent.
But hey – 42 percent sounds so much better.
I’m happy to say that this book goes after many of the problems that I routinely write to you about. It’s an expose of many of the hidden tactics that pharmaceutical companies use to pump up their products. Practices like funding their own research trials and cherry picking only the results that show their drugs in the best light. Or pitting their new drugs against placebo control groups rather than similar drugs on the market to make the drugs seem as though they’re even more effective.
It’s all very shady, and it’s high time that these issues were brought into the light – I mean, of course, by someone other than myself. So often I feel like a voice in the wilderness, but I’m hoping that the case being made in KNOW YOUR CHANCES: UNDERSTANDING HEALTH STATISTICS gets wide publicity and readership. I don’t care who exposes Big Pharma-as long as these guys are exposed.
