Death and deafness by science fiction

[Guest guest]

" WC Douglass " <realhealth

Daily Dose - Death and deafness by science " fiction "

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 07:15:00 -0400

 

 

 

 

 

Daily Dose

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August 05, 2005

 

 

For " scientific " drug studies, 2 out of 3 is the norm

 

One of the fundamental pillars of what's called The Scientific Method

- the empirical standard which all research is supposed to strive for

- is " repeatability. " In other words, a study that yields a certain

conclusion should ALWAYS yield that identical conclusion when repeated

in the same way. If it does not, the research is flawed.

 

This concept is the backbone of science itself, really. Knowing this,

guess what a review of 13 years worth of research published in three

major medical journals revealed? I'll give you a clue: Much of this

research has to do with the effectiveness of DRUGS.

 

Yep, you guessed it - a lot of it doesn't hold water.

 

According to a recent Associated Press article, 32% of the

highest-profile research conclusions published in The Journal of the

American Medical Association, The Lancet (my favorite) and the New

England Journal of Medicine between 1990 and 2003 were either

contradicted by later, more rigorous study or were found to be less

concrete than the original studies led us to believe. Here are just a

few of the reversals the article mentioned:

 

* Hormones that were " proven " to protect menopausal women from

heart disease were later shown to actually increase their risk of the

disease.

* Nitric oxide does not improve survivability of patients with

respiratory failure, despite what an earlier study had shown.

* A specific antibiotic treatment found in a small study to

improve survivability in some sepsis patients was found to be

meaningless in a larger study.

 

Although nothing revealed in this article is so Earth-shaking in and

of itself, it still serves as a great reminder of something I've been

saying for years: That many of the studies our FDA uses to determine

the safety and efficacy of a drug are be just plain WRONG. A lot of

them are routinely reversed in future research of a more stringent nature.

 

This is especially likely, because drug makers design and structure

studies to try and cast the anticipated results in the most favorable

light. That means a lot of studies may have a less-than-objective

methodology from the get-go...

 

The net result, quite simply, is drugs that kill, cripple, and are not

even always recalled.

 

 

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Ultrasounding off

 

Speaking of research that's likely to be flawed, a recent report from

the BBCNews claims the following: Ultrasound scans are safe for babies.

 

This, according to a study conducted at the University of Australia

and published in The Lancet. The research focused on 2700 children for

the eight years following birth, and found no measurable physical or

developmental differences in two groups: Those who'd undergone only

one ultrasound and those who had as many as five.

 

Hmmm. I wonder why they didn't measure against a group of kids who'd

had no ultrasound scans? Probably because they COULDN'T FIND ANY!

 

If you've been with me for a while, you know how I feel about

ultrasound scans. I think they're likely to be damaging to babies'

hearing - the one thing the Australian study didn't test, apparently

(talk about flawed research). Modern obstetricians scoff at this

notion, claiming the sound waves are of a frequency our ears can't

even detect, so how can it be damaging to them?

 

Well, we can't see UV light, either, but it can still damage our eyes!

 

Although I haven't published a study on it in The Lancet, common sense

tells me that when you bombard a fetus with high-frequency sound

powerful enough to penetrate a mother's womb (twice: once on the way

in, and once after they bounce off the baby), it can't be GOOD for the

kid. Mayo Clinic physician Dr. Mostafa Fatemi often wondered why

unborn babies tended to flinch violently at the instant their

ultra-sound portraits are taken. (He found out by placing a tiny

hydrophone inside a woman's uterus during the procedure. The device

registered NEARLY 100 DECIBLES-as loud as a subway train or a jet!)

 

Now, if they're not feeling something, why does this happen?

 

Perhaps someday someone will structure a valid study on this, and

we'll get some real answers. Until then, I say we save the " sonar " for

submarine warfare.

 

Skeptical, and common-sensical,

 

William Campbell Douglass II, MD