When you fill up a bucket to the top with water it will start to overflow. Whilst not a perfect analogy this concept comes to mind when one considers the following two trends. The drug quetiapine (Seroquel) is now the “prescription drug of choice” on the street. There...
This video shows graphically how many people are helped by taking certain medications for “risk reduction” . This figure called “the number needed to treat ” is rarely quoted because it would make more people question the need for...
A fortnight ago I wrote about how the role of cholesterol in heart disease was being challenged. There was also a challenge to the widespread prescribing of statin medications. And to cap it off we saw a near hysterical reaction of some health authorities to this. The...
A headline about lack of hospital beds or people missing out on care is always popular. Often statistics are used to show that certain sections of the population are getting less access to treatment than other sections. It reinforces the sense of crisis about the...
It seems that there are enough physicians out there who aren’t even a tiny bit embarrassed about referring to themselves out loud as“Thought Leaders” or “Key Opinion Leaders” to keep Canada’s Dr. Sergio Sismondo busy writing about them. I first wrote about his work...
One can tell a lot about how solid a scientific opinion is by the response to questioning. Genuine science is never settled. It is constantly questioning assumptions as new knowledge emerges. Dogma rejects questioning and seeks to harass those who dare pose questions....
