Category: Evidence-based medicine

A Canadian perspective on clinical trial registration

Katatrepsis5 Comments

When pharmaceutical companies wish to market a drug, there is a legislative requirement that they first demonstrate efficacy and safety.  The pharmaceutical companies do this by contracting out clinical trials.  The history of these trials is one of refinement over time with the most recent trials meeting rigorous requirements for blinding (i.e. neither the participants nor the experimenters know who’s getting what kind of treatment) and randomisation (i.e. random allocation of participants to the different treatments).

I was listening to an old Skeptics Guide to the Universe (SGU) podcast from October 13th 2010 which featured an interview with Ben Goldacre, a psychiatrist, medical writer and author of the excellent blog/column/book Bad Science.  He made an argument that resonated so strongly that I have to reproduce it in its entirety:
Read More »

REPOST: Homeopathy and the NHS

KatatrepsisLeave a comment

[THIS IS MY ATTEMPT TO PRESERVE SOME OLD BLOG POSTS BEFORE DELETING THE OLD BLOG.  THIS WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED AUGUST 5TH 2009]

Over at Merseyside Skeptics, Marsh has a piece on overdosing on homeopathic treatments (more commonly known as “drowning”). He points out that the extent of the dilution of the treatment in question almost certainly left none of the active ingredient in the pill… This is all simply absurd. A part of me would like to set up a homeopathic clinic, sell pills filled with water and take people’s money just to punish them for being so bloody stupid… The worst thing is that the NHS is currently paying people to “practise” homeopathy…

Read More »