Conflicts of Interest on Stilts - or is it on Steroids?

Conflicts of Interest on Stilts - or is it Steroids? - Read George Monbiot's Guardian article. "Democracy itself is being undermined by publicly funded agencies crawling with conflicts of interest and devoid of scrutiny" I urge you to read the whole of this excellent article about how undue power is increasingly being accorded to Big Pharma and other industrial giants, while ordinary voters and other taxpayers go unrepresented on these quangos.

And here is some of what Dr Rath has to say about this: "At the time of writing, the Board of Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) contains retired senior executives from drug companies AstraZeneca and Merck Sharp & Dohme. Similarly, its Executive Board contains a former employee of Glaxo, DuPont and DuPont Pharmaceuticals who is currently an employee of Bristol-Myers Squibb; a former employee of Glaxo Wellcome and GlaxoSmithKline; and a former employee of SmithKline Beecham. Continuing this pattern, the council members on the country’s Medical Research Council (MRC) include representatives of Sanofi Pasteur and Pfizer, whilst its Global Health Group and Translational Research Group both have members from GlaxoSmithKline."

Gary Foster was about to get married but he has died in a government-funded medical trial after receiving seven overdoses of drugs.

Man dies in government cancer drug trial
Article in the Sunday Telegraph

Extracts:

"Gary Foster, 27, was repeatedly given twice the amount of chemotherapy drugs he should have been prescribed.

He was due to be married this month.

Reports have said his death was caused by an error in the setting up of the trial on the computer system at University College London Hospital (UCLH).

A second patient was affected by the same mistake, but survived.

When the MRC suspected patients had been given overdoses, instead of calling the hospital immediately it wrote a letter - which a nurse at UCLH failed to open until two days after Mr Foster had died."

"UCLH has been forced to suspend the trial, called TE23, which tests whether a combination of five drugs is better at treating testicular cancer than the standard treatment of three drugs.

It has, however, being continued at other UK hospitals.

Mr Foster, a graphic designer, had just been diagnosed with testicular cancer.

He was told he had a 60 per cent chance of survival."

"Mr Foster received the drugs during visits to UCLH between June and September 2007. On seven occasions, he received 30,000 units of bleomycin - of one of the five drugs - instead of 15,000.

A third patient died at a different hospital after receiving an overdose of the same drug due to an error by a nurse or doctor. However the Medical Research Council (MRC), the government body which ran the trial, said the drug was not the direct cause of his death.

An inquest heard Mr Foster began to show signs of deterioration after taking the drugs.

Eventually he developed a dry cough, a symptom of damage to his lungs that had been caused by the overdose of bleomycin. The lung damage was eventually fatal.

The inquest heard the cough should have been recognised by doctors and nurses as a warning sign. However, he was given a final dose."

Obviously there's a degree of medical negligence here that caused avoidable suffering and the sad death of Gary Foster. It was not just bad luck or mistakes. - But I'd be very surprised if any sanctions are taken against the negligent personnel responsible. - And therein lies the most common cause of medical negligence...

More criticism of statins: - doubts are being raised over whether statins really live up to the hype about them

So much for the wonder drug - Sunday Telegraph

Extracts:

"More than three per cent of the population are now taking statins, at a cost to the NHS of £730 million last year. They have gained the reputation of being something of a wonder drug and are now prescribed not just for patients already suffering from heart disease but also for those identified as being at risk of developing cardiac problems in the future. The Government claims that its policy of encouraging the prescription of statins saves up to 7,000 lives a year.

Now, though, doubts are being raised over whether statins really live up to the hype. Dr James LeFanu, medical columnist of The Sunday Telegraph, highlighted the issue a month ago - and has since received more than 400 letters from readers who have had a less than happy experience with the drugs."

"So far, the Government and the medical establishment disagree with Dr LeFanu and those patients who have stopped taking their statins. The biggest British study into the effectiveness of the drug, published in The Lancet five years ago, followed 20,536 patients who took simvastatin or a placebo over five years. It concluded that for high-risk patients, the drug could cut the risk of heart attacks, strokes or the need for surgery to unblock arteries by about one third. Critically, it said prescribing should be widened to cover increasing numbers of patients, because it had been shown the drug was "so well tolerated and safe".

But the study, funded by the Medical Research Council and the British Heart Foundation, was unusual in one significant respect. Of 63,603 patients screened to take part in the trial, about half - 32,145 - were selected as eligible. Of these, more than one third were subsequently excluded, following a "run-in period" where they tried the drug for up to six weeks. Reasons for their exclusion varied. Overall, 26 per cent either dropped out or were deemed by researchers to be unlikely to keep taking the drugs for the full five years. A further 10 per cent were excluded because their GPs warned of increased risks due to existing health conditions. Others were excluded because of apparent side-effects, such as rising levels of liver enzymes and creatine, and, in some cases, developing muscle weakness.

So, of the 63,603 initially selected, only 20,536 continued - a mere 32 per cent. The chairman of the British Heart Foundation, Professor Peter Weissberg, admits: "It tried everyone on the drug and only the ones who didn't have side-effects were continued. That is unusual, but dozens of other trials have looked at this in a more standard way and have concluded that the side-effects are not major. One of the problems with clinical trials will always be the drop-out rate. The key thing to establish with this trial was: if you take this drug, does it save your life or not? It concluded that it does.""

It's also worth looking at relative risk and number needed to treat

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Scientists, writing in The Lancet medical journal this week, say that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than ecstasy, LSD and cannabis.

Alcohol 'is more dangerous than illegal drugs'

Extract:

"Alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than ecstasy, LSD and cannabis, according to a new drug classification table proposed by leading experts.

Ecstasy, currently a class-A drug, possession of which can result in a seven-year prison sentence, is placed near the bottom of the new table.

At the other end of the list, which gives each substance a “harm score,” alcohol is ranked fifth - not far behind cocaine and heroin.

The new ranking method would make alcohol a class-A drug under Britain’s current ABC classification system, the experts said.

The team of scientists, led by Professor David Nutt, from the University of Bristol, and Professor Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council, want the current ABC system scrapped.

The system is “arbitrary,” not based on scientific evidence and only increases the confusion surrounding drug issues, they said.

Writing in The Lancet medical journal, Prof Blakemore said the table is intended to guide policy makers when drawing up a replacement for the current Misuse of Drugs Act.""

"The drugs 'harm index'
1: Heroin
2: Cocaine
3: Barbiturates
4: Street Methadone
5: Alcohol
6: Ketamine
7: Benzodiazepines
8: Amphetamines
9: Tobacco
10: Buprenorphine
11: Cannabis
12: Solvents
13: 4-MTA
14: LSD
15: Methylphenidate
16: Anabolic steroids
17: GHB
18: Ecstasy
19: Alkyl Nitrates
20: Khat"

Well I'd like to suggest these scientists check out prescribed steroids and HRT. - In my informed opinion, as a steroid victim, these drugs are far more dangerous, and harm far more people than anabolic steroids, and should be much higher up the list. - I agree with them that benzodiazepines are very dangerous. - Benzodiazepines are another drug that doctors prescribe incautiously to their innocent victims/patients.