THE NEWS ON ONE CLICK
One Click needs your support.
It's easy to assist us with either a one-off or monthly recurring donation. ClickHERE to donate. A donation of any amount is greatly appreciated and helps us to keep One Click running.
Systematic reviews of published randomized clinical trials (RCTs) are considered the gold standard source of synthesized evidence for interventions, but their conclusions are vulnerable to distortion when trial sponsors have strong interests that might benefit from suppressing or promoting selected data. Unfortunately, industry and regulators have historically treated clinical study reports as confidential documents, impeding additional scrutiny by independent researchers. We propose clinical study reports become available to such scrutiny, and describe one manufacturer's unconvincing reasons for refusing to provide us access to full clinical study reports. We challenge industry to either provide open access to clinical study reports or publically defend their current position of RCT data secrecy. While the WHO recently added Tamiflu to its Essential Medicines list, if FDA is right, the drug's effectiveness may be no better than aspirin or acetaminophen (paracetemol). It is the public who take and pay for approved drugs, and therefore the public should have access to complete information about those drugs. We should also not lose sight of the fact that clinical trials are experiments conducted on humans that carry an assumption of contributing to medical knowledge. One Click Note: Succinctly put for the layman, this paper means that many of the big-seller pharma drugs doled out to you by your drug dealer doctor are suss because their data has been purposefully suppressed by the pharmaceutical industry. The noxious smell currently wafting over the medical industry in all its guises is beginning to stink as badly as Bhopal. Congratulations to all those authors with the courage to challenge the pharma behemoth, placing their valuable work freely in the public domain.
Peter Doshi, Tom Jefferson, Chris Del Marm, PLoS Medicine
Related Links:
Peter Doshi & Tom Jefferson, The New York Times
Michael Smith, medpage TODAY
BERNAMA, Malaysian National News Agency
Jeremy Laurance, New Zealand Herald
Jeremy Laurance, The Independent
On Friday, April 6, the FDA approved another of Eli Lilly's "breakthroughs" whose clinical value is questionable (at best). The focus, in this instance, is not a therapeutic intervention, but rather a test using a radioactive imaging agent-- a dye, brand name, Amyvid (florbetapir)--which is to be used in brain PET scans to identify amyloid clumps. The presence of amyloid in the brains of Alzheimer's patients has been observed post mortem in autopsies. However, amyloid plaques have also been found in the brains of at least 20% of healthy elder adults with no cognitive problems. Thus, the finding of amyloids doesn't mean the person has Alzheimer's. Furthermore, FDA acknowledges that most doctors are not trained to interpret brain scan results--raising further doubts about the justification for its marketing approval of Amyvid. The test will likely result in a high percentage of false-positives greatly expanding the number of peop le mistakenly identified as having Alzheimer's. Such a flawed test is of no clinical value--it will increase anxiety, add confusion for seniors and their families, and it will increase healthcare costs without any benefit for patients with Alzheimer's. If the FDA's goal in its licensing determinations is to bankrupt the nation's healthcare budget by approving worthless, all-too-often hazardous drugs, vaccines, and drug devices that undermine rather than improve health, it is doing a commendable job!
Vera Sharav, AHRP
As a nurse, I am heartened by your coverage of the bizarre, violent behavior sometimes seen in people taking psychotropic drugs, especially the SSRI’s. [“Soldiers in a fog of drugs and war,” page one, April 10.] The literature dispensed with the drugs warns of this, yet it goes ignored. Many of us have waited a long time to see this exposed. Nurses and others who keep up with health issues know that these meds are heavily implicated in sudden, unexplained murders, school killings and suicides by seemingly “normal” people. Tragically, news outlets steer well clear of mentioning the drugs, as they don’t want to face the ire of “Big Pharma” or the loss of advertising; except of course in cases where it can be reported that the defendant was “off” his “medication” at the time, which gets mentioned in the headline. Drug companies know how to use their influence, targeting struggling “ independent” papers. Congratulations and let’s try to keep up the courageous coverage. This is a life-or-death issue. I don’t mean to make excuses for Robert Bales in the latest massacre. Nonetheless, we must finally acknowledge the role antidepressants are playing, and expose those in and out of the military who greatly benefit from their mass dissemination and use.
Susan Liddell-Jones, The Seattle Times
Related Links:
Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times / The Seattle Times
Protesters wearing Anonymous Guy Fawkes masks take part
in a demonstration in Nice, southeastern France, in February 2012.
The annual TIME 100 poll is an opportunity for readers to vote on the year’s most influential figures across all fields, from politics to tech to pop culture. When the poll closed at 5 p.m. on Friday, April 6, Anonymous had racked up more than 395,000 yes votes, up from just 40,000 a day earlier, leapfrogging not only Martin (who ended up with more than 264,000 yeses) but also Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of India’s Gujarat state, who finished in third place.
Time Staff, TIME
Related Links:
Alex Webb, examiner
Caroline Donnelly, ITPRO
Villawood detention centre in Sydney, one of the Australian facilities run by Serco.
Crikey, an independent news website in Australia, has obtained copies of the training manuals used to instruct guards in detention centres for asylum seekers. The manuals were produced by service company Serco, the British multinational which runs detention centres in Australia and Britain, and purport to advise the use of ‘pain’ in restraint. The manuals reveal the “control and restraint” techniques which guards were told to use on uncooperative detainees. Crikey reports: “he 2009 training course manual recommends the use of ‘pain’ to defend, subdue and control asylum seekers through straight punches, palm heel strikes, side angle kicks, front thrust kicks and knee strikes.” The training manuals also show “how prison staff are trained to kick, punch and jab their fingers into detainee limbs and ‘pressure points’ to render them motionless.” Given that Serco provides similar services in immigration removal centres in Britain, this investigation also raises questions about their practices in this country.
Tom Wills, The Bureau Of Investigative Journalism
Related Links:
Dr Éoin Clarke (PhD), Black Triangle Campaign
YouTube
We have had a heart-rending response to our revelation that at least 32 people are dying each week despite them being ruled not sick enough in the medical test for the new incapacity benefit. Employment and Support Allowance claimants died after a "work capability assessment" concluded that they were able to get a job and only entitled to a lower rate of benefit. Atos - where the boss Keith Wilman gets £800,000 a year - has been widely slated for the quality of its medical assessment. Just last week the company was condemned by the Advertising Standards Authority for claiming that it has got "1700+ healthcare professionals". Such is the arrogance of this firm that it didn't even bothering responding to the ASA, which is the kind of behaviour we usually see in fly-by-night conmen, not huge companies trusted by the government with such important matters as this.
Andrew Penman, Mirror
Related Links:
Nick Sommerlad, Mirror
Blog de la section syndicale SUD d'AtoS Infogérance / Department for Making Hope Possible
News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Mark Lewis, the lawyer who has been at the forefront of efforts to expose phone hacking at the News of the World, is expected to file three civil lawsuits on behalf of three alleged victims. One is believed to be connected to the late Diana, Princess of Wales and the Royal household while a second is linked to the England football team. The third is described as a “Hollywood case” because the individual was in contact with a celebrity, which made him a target. All three claim that the offences took place whilst they were on American soil. The threat of further legal action in the United States is likely to expose News Corp, the parent company of News International which published the now defunct tabloid, to further embarrassing claims and bring the scandal to the front door of its headquarters in New York. It has been reported that the FBI have already begun examining claims by Jude Law, the actor, that his phone was hacked while he was at JFK airport in New York.
James Orr & Andrew Hough, The Telegraph
READ THE NEWS ON ONE CLICK
Posts
