Drug companies are deliberately keeping the public—and the medical community—in the dark about “unfavorable” clinical trials. Action Alert!The RECORD trial (see our article in this issue) is just one example of how drug study data can be manipulated by pharmaceutical companies and the FDA. But it gets worse—even if a study finds a drug isn’t very safe or effective, it’s likely you and your doctor will never hear about it.
The problem—called publication bias—is widespread. About half of all drug trials aren’t made publicly available, and positive findings are twice as likely to be published as negative findings for the same drug. Since doctors can access only a small portion of the full scientific picture, they are led to believe that drugs are much safer or more effective than they actually are. This results in a huge gap between what the FDA knows about drugs and what prescribing doctors know.
For example, one independent study looked at all drug trials submitted to the FDA for twelve antidepressants. Thirty-eight of the trials showed positive results, while thirty-six showed negative results. Yet thirty-seven of the positive results were published in peer-reviewed journals, while only three of the negative studies were! Any doctor looking at the published studies would be led to believe that antidepressants were overwhelmingly effective. This is especially troubling considering the many negative effects of antidepressants—including suicidal behavior, and evidence of violent behavior against others.
http://www.anh-usa.org/cherry-picked-drug-studies/
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