On the general topic of proving drug safety and effectiveness, this
letter to the editor in the NYT a couple of days ago might be
interesting:
Re "Collapse of a Cholesterol Drug":
You refer to "me too" drugs as offering "a merely incremental advance
over some existing therapy," but there is no reason to think that
they offer any advance at all.
In the clinical trials required for approval by the Food and Drug
Administration, manufacturers do not have to compare "me too" drugs
with old drugs in the same class, only with placebos.
For all we know, then, each new "me too" drug may be worse than existing ones.
The answer is for Congress to authorize the F.D.A. to require new
drugs to be compared head to head with old ones.
Marcia Angell, M.D.
Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 5, 2006
The writer, a senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical
School, was an editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine.
--
The best argument against Intelligent Design is that fact that
people believe in it.
* PAUL K. BRANDON [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* Psychology Dept Minnesota State University *
* 23 Armstrong Hall, Mankato, MN 56001 ph 507-389-6217 *
* http://krypton.mnsu.edu/~pkbrando/ *
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