Tag Archives: Snake Oil

Snake Oil or Medicine? by Dr Kathleen Thompson

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Every day we read on the Internet, in newspapers or in magazines about wonder drugs. With all these miracle cures around it is surprising that so many of us still suffer illness. Surely we just need to pop one of these pills and all will be well?

But maybe, just maybe, some of these potions can’t cure cancer, can’t make people with arthritis dance in the streets and can’t make you lose ten inches off your waist-line in a week?

If you have incurable cancer, or constant arthritic pain, you wouldn’t want to miss a useful treatment. So how can you know whether claims are genuine or snake oil?

Approved medicines are tested in numerous clinical studies, usually in thousands of people. Study data are scrutinised by regulatory authorities (FDA in USA and EMA in Europe) before doctors can prescribe them.  Thus there is firm evidence that they work, and a great deal is known about side-effects or safety issues.

However, anything can be advertised on the Internet – Google has no truth filter.  Impressive-sounding study results may not be scientifically sound. So here are some clues to help you assess them (See Table): Snake Oil or Medicine? by Dr Kathleen Thompson tableplacebo

1. Has the ‘medicine’ been tested against placebo (dummy medicine)? If people believe they are receiving a beneficial treatment, they often feel better, regardless. Most studies should include some patients who only receive placebo, to make sure any benefit is due to the real medicine.

2. Measures of benefit (endpoints) should be chosen before a study starts. Eg an influenza medicine may measure fever. If fevers don’t improve, one can’t then change the endpoint to, say, sore throat, just because these improved more. Some symptoms will improve by coincidence, and it isn’t valid to cherry-pick the best results. This is often done in unregulated ‘studies’ and can make a treatment look better than it is.

3. Always check how many people were tested. If a study only had two patients, and one received real medicine and one placebo, even if the patient on the real medicine did better, it could have been due to chance. Statisticians calculate how many patients are needed to give a reliable result. Unregulated studies rarely include enough people.

Unapproved studies are not always checked, so there is more opportunity to ‘cheat’—results may be changed, ‘patients’ invented, or data from any patients who didn’t improve may be removed. Where the study was performed, and by who, may give reassurance on this, or not.

A respectable study will be written up as a report, and will be published in a good scientific journal. Be careful though – some ‘journals’ have impressive titles but are not what they seem. You can check them on Cite Factor (see below) to be sure.

I hope this helps you decide what you can believe. If in doubt, do ask your doctor’s opinion. And remember, if something seems to good to be true – then it may well be exactly that.

By Dr K Thompson, author of From Both Ends of the Stethoscope: Getting through breast cancer – by a doctor who knows

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01A7DM42Q http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01A7DM42Q

http://faitobooks.co,uk

Further information:

http://www.citefactor.org

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/info/understand

Note: These articles express personal views. No warranty is made as to the accuracy or completeness of information given and you should always consult a doctor if you need medical advice

 

 

Betting on Snake Oil By Matt Harwood

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The sinking of my stomach and the pure shame can be felt just as hard-hitting as it will do the day my grand-children ask the question.

“You mean your generation based a majority of their economy, transport infrastructure, and manufacturing on a natural resource you knew was finite and running out? And you did nothing? Are you insane?”

The idea is insanity. To bet such critical parts of our society as transport and energy on an increasingly scarce resource as oil, goes against every human survival instinct. The financial “free market” has over-ridden sensible action.

Petrol prices are only going to go up, as the slick stuff becomes extinct. Anyone waiting for them to subside is fooling themselves.

The “free market” favours oil because you need to keep buying it, so it makes profits. Very nice profits, at that.

You know what doesn’t make such nice profits? Solar energy. After all, you don’t need to keep paying the piper for sun rays. This is the fundamental reason that I worry our switch to renewable sources of energy will fall too late.

I am personally ashamed of fellow humans that put profit before people. Somewhere along the way, the priorities got mixed about.

Now this isn’t a rant against capitalism, nor a cry for help against climate change. This is a statement of common sense – right now we are betting our future on something we know, for a fact, won’t be around in a few decades.

Would you buy a house in an area you knew is going to be knocked to the ground in 5 years time? Would you sign up for an 18 month phone contract with a company that has announced their shutting up shop in a few weeks?

As the day of oil extinction nears, serious investment and intelligence is needed in to alternative energy and ways to replace plastic. The “free market” stops those seeking profits spending too much time on it, so we need a philanthropic, non-profit market to take the slack.

Oil companies know that one day, they won’t have a business. They know that, eventually, they’ll have no product and the energy market won’t be worth what it is today. But they continue on, with almost the same excuse I have used for smoking – “I’ll stop by the time it does me damage. I can’t imagine that far in the future”. Short-term thinking, when so much is at stake, is a mug’s game.

We need a group of smart people to come together in a real initiative to solve this problem once and for all. Any takers?

Is it Snake Oil? – Interactive Infographic

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It’s hard to know what’s good and what’s guff, should you be taking vitamin supplements? Will my anti-oxident rosehip cranberry echinacia lavender infusion cure my indecision or should I plump for a green tea? Will that weight loss suppliment advertised on Facebook actually work? Afterall, it is on Facebook, so it must be true?! There’s so much confusing and conflicting information what we really need is someone to take all the evidence and put it into some sort of pretty picture.
If there’s one thing the people behind Information is Beatiful have proved that interactive graphics definately improve my attention span.
The creators have this to say about the image and information they used: “This image is a “balloon race”. The higher a bubble, the greater the evidence for its effectiveness. But the supplements are only effective for the conditions listed inside the bubble. We only considered large, human, randomized placebo-controlled trials in our data scrape – wherever possible. No animal trials. No cell studies..”
This visualisation generates itself from this Google Doc. So when new research comes out, they should be able to quickly update the data and regenerate the image. The spreadsheet also references the source of the research; if you’re interested in that sort of thing.