Subject: Wonder Drugs That Can Kill
Author: KevysmomDate: 19 Jul
This was published in Discovery Magazine on June 20,2008. It is one of
the BEST
articles I have read on how drugs can kill.
Wonder Drugs That Can Kill
Modern pharmaceutical "breakthroughs" sometimes do more harm than
good.
Such limitations in a study's design can escape detection even by top
peer reviewers and medical editors. Marcia Angell, the former editor-
in-
chief of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), says that most
doctors are ill equipped to critically assess the conclusions of
researchers. A trim woman with a warm smile, Angell leans forward in
her seat at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and says, "Let me
tell you the dirty secret of medical journals: It is very hard to find
enough articles to publish. With a rejection rate of 90 percent for
original research, we were hard pressed to find 10 percent that were
worth publishing. So you end up publishing weak studies because there
is so much bad work out there." Doctors, Angell says, are not
skeptical
enough about what they read in top journals. "They should say, `I
don't
believe this; prove it to me.'"
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jul/20-wonder-drugs-that-can-
kill/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=
Donna
