Posted by madeline on December 3, 2006, at 18:17:45
In reply to Illness increases vulnerability to the irrational, posted by Squiggles on December 3, 2006, at 9:10:42
When a physician prescribes you a drug, they are playing the odds. When you take a drug, you are playing the odds.
It's a numbers game. What number you ask?
That number is a statistical value called a p value. You can think of it as a value that describes how certain a researcher is that a certain result did not happen by chance. When p-values are less than 5%, then that is considered a "statistically significant" and - here is the kicker - VALID effect.
Clinical trials are DESIGNED based on that number and it depends on three primary things: how many people were enrolled in the trial, how big the effect size is and how variable the effect is.
So does a drug work? It depends on the p-value. It may only work in 30% of patients, but if that is enough to satisfy a p-value of only 5% chance of error, then that drug officially "works", gets prescribed and we are all on our merry way.
If a drug offers a 3% improvement in 98% of patients tested, and that is enough to satisfy the p value of 5%, then here we are again on our merry way.
If a drug causes kidney value in 3% of patients, but that isn't enough to be satitistically significant, then guess what? That drug gets officially labeled as "not causing kidney failure", when in fact, it DOES in 3% of patients.
So when you take a drug you play the percentages. Am I going to be in the 3% that gets kidney failure? Am I going to be in the 30% that works? We can NEVER say ANYTHING about the safety and efficacy of any drug in an individual, we can only play the odds based on the statistics.
And as we all know, there are lies, damn lies and statistics. Right?
So, what does all this mean to the discussion here? Just because a drug has been through the rigors of biomedicine, it doesn't mean it will work for you or not kill you, it just means the odds say yes or no.
Given that, I think it is wise to always look at alternative treatments even though they may be kooky sounding or just plain weird. I mean fish oil? Come on, who would have thought it? Well, it works in some people.
And where I think people get into trouble is when they look only to exclusively one type of therapy be it herbal or biomedical and proclaim it to be the "truth". It's not, there is no truth, only the numbers.
Maddie
poster:madeline
thread:709872
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20061129/msgs/710033.html