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For example, prescription drugs for Alzheimer's disease work in fewer than one in three patients, and those drugs used for cancer are only effective in one out of four patients.
I think you need to take this with a truckload of salt.
Look at the entities with low response rates: Alzheimer's disease, Hepatitis C, cancer (which, somehow is lumped together as oncology, which doesn't make sense, because cancer is MANY, MANY diseases). These are all very difficult-to-treat entities for which drugs are approved because the clinical trial data support SOME effectiveness in SOME populations who suffer from these illnesses. Certainly not what is seen with antibiotics and infectious diseases, where the response rate for some infections approaches 95%.
This is a foolish statement at best and cherry picking data (which are taken out of context) at worst. Also, note that this is six years old. There have been better drugs brought out for incontinence, RA and cancer since then.
The drug company's own executive made these statements about their drugs not working 50% of the time. I seriously doubt things have gotten better the last 6 years.
Allen Roses talk was to build reasoning for individualized drugs based on genetic markers. It's a well known talk where he cherry picked the worst performers to show that one size fits all medicine can be refined to give more targeted drugs, which is further along in the article.
It makes sense that research in this area needs to be funded, but it's a bad bad thread title to say all their drugs only work 50% of the time. The article generalized the original study and talk (which I have seen presented a bit after he did the original) and what drugs they studied didn't make it in the article. Just more misunderstood hype and propaganda.
Allen Roses talk was to build reasoning for individualized drugs based on genetic markers. It's a well known talk where he cherry picked the worst performers to show that one size fits all medicine can be refined to give more targeted drugs, which is further along in the article.
It makes sense that research in this area needs to be funded, but it's a bad bad thread title to say all their drugs only work 50% of the time. The article generalized the original study and talk (which I have seen presented a bit after he did the original) and what drugs they studied didn't make it in the article. Just more misunderstood hype and propaganda.
Can you provide a link that proves that most drugs work for most people? I would appreciate it.
Can you provide a link that proves that most drugs work for most people? I would appreciate it.
Every drug goes through effectiveness trials, it's a requirement of being sold...it's a 10 year $500 million process. However, if one drug treated everyone the same then only the most effective would be sold. In reality everyone is affected differently.
This study does not prove drugs are ineffective, you can't even tell what drugs he compared in the article. You can't dig into the effectiveness and adverse reactions by drug. If you want effectiveness rates you need to break it down to the components.
You are right that most drugs go through the "trial and error" method, as doctors try drug after drug on some patients, hoping that one of them might eventually work. I personally think that is a horrible way to treat patients who have to endure those negative side-effects from drug after drug that doesn't work, not to mention all that wasted money they spent.
If there is a better way, you could make a billion finding it (not sure I would want a drug never given to a human though). By the time human trials go into effect it's already gone though several trials to find toxicity and effective/adverse rates in animals.
In the end, people are going to be taking the drug...and it's best to have in a controlled environment that if something does happen people can keep them healthy. Animal testing can only go so far, and animals react differently to drugs then humans (even engineered pigs). So you have to give it to a sample population and just see what happens. It beats the alternative of handing it out to doctors so a larger number of the general public (in uncontrolled conditions) gets to find out how well it works, and they might be away from doctors to stop any adverse reactions.
Or the other alternative without human testing is to have no pharmaceuticals at all, and boy life will be fun going back to the early 1900's in terms of medical care. When the life expectancy was almost half it is now.
Even then, you can't test for all adverse reactions in the lab for everything out there. It would take 100 years to test every possible drug combination, including supplements.
I am in my late 60's and take NO prescription medications at all. I am in excellent health and stay that way with a healthy vegetarian diet, using Chinese herbs to regulate my blood pressure and cholesterol.
A doctor once told me that prescription drugs weaken your body.
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