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Government Grants Support Meta-Analyses That Can Spawn Mega-Misinformation

It was another headline busting study this week: Pfizer Drug Tied to Heart Risks – a provocative title no doubt fed to the media from the publisher: the Canadian Medical Association Journal. The study was yet another meta-analysis that culled the world’s literature in an attempt to determine if a trend could be found that might implicate Chantix as a causative agent for and increased incidence of heart disease in smokers.

On its surface, the study sounds authoratative, analyzing “14-double-blind randomized controlled trials involving 8216 participants” ranging in duration from “7 to 52 weeks.”

Never mind that 57% (25) of adverse events were weighted from one study and that none of the 14 studies had odds ratios that did not cross the unity line.

Despite this, the lead author concluded:

Despite the limitations of our analysis, our findings have potential regulatory and clinical implications.

Sorry, this is not correct. There are no clinical implications of this trial. Like all metanalyses, meta-anaylses simply cannot determine cause and effect. (Note to main stream media: are you folks listening?!?)

That being said, there’s another concern I have Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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