Placebo washout: Another outrageous medical coverup

[Islander]

Jon Rappoport
FEBRUARY 24, 2012

Here is yet another way to do medical studies that guarantee a waterfall of lies will spread out far and wide. Another way to make the studies look good when they aren’t.

Let’s say you went into a school to see if it was a good place for your child to acquire a real education. And you were shown overall performance records of the students on standardized tests, and these records looked quite impressive.

Upon inquiring a little further, though, you came across an interesting point. The head of the school believed that some students just didn’t perform well on tests—and so he had excused them from taking any exams.

Shocked, you said to him, “Your performance records are a sham. They don’t reflect the truth. You’ve stacked the deck.”

And he replied, “Not at all. I’ve merely kept statistics on those pupils who have the ability to take tests. That’s the important population. The others shouldn’t be tested at all. In this venue, they don’t count.”
Keep that analogy in mind as we proceed.

Read more: https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2...dical-reality/

[Reesacat]

Words fail me......no wonder the drug results are skewed...

[Katee]

Afraid i'm not a bit surprised. I know i've told this story before:

I took Statistics the second semester of my Junior year in College. (I took Research Design the following semester. It all looked so "clean" in the way it was explained in the books.) We had to do a large project, but statistics were the focus, any statistics.

I was working for a doctor at the time, and had access to large amounts of data from the inserts that came with the drugs. So i came up with a hypothesis. It was that as X and Y (I think i used Prozac and Paxil, but i may have used Zoloft) were in the same "class of drugs," that is Selective Serotonin Uptake Inhibitors, then it was possible/probable their side effects would correlate.

So i ran the numbers with side effects thru a really cool Apple Statistics program (this would have been about 1992). The two drugs did not correlate at all. But then, just to play with the cool program a bit more, i ran each drug's numbers of side effects against those reported for the placebo. They correlated 100%. I tried again with each of the placebo statistics against each other, and naturally, they did not correlate, either.

I knew then that the trials were badly skewed, corrupted, or messed with in some fashion. There is no way, ever, that the placebo's side effects should mirror those of the actual drug. (They were not, say 20 people had stomach problems with both the drug and the placebo, but the percentage of drug and placebo correlated each time. Usually the placebo was about 25% of the drug, but as i said, each and every time one symptom showed up with the drug, there was a steady percent of the placebo folks with the same symptom. A test that was not corrupted should have had placebo side effects all over the map.)

My original hypothesis made sense, if the drugs actually work the way we are told they do. But placebos having side effects that shadow the drugs is simply not possible, statistically.

And, as i have said numerous times, i saw drug studies being done when i worked hospital. It was not a large group of people. It was one person at a time selected to have the study run. The pharmacy sent up the med and no one knew if the patient was getting the drug or not, but i heard constant speculation from the nursing staff, the patient, the pharmacy techs, and the drug rep. You cannot convince me that bias did not make its way into those studies.

[mellowsong]

I've never heard of placebo wash out, but I'm not surprised in the least. Katee, your experience with the stats is fascinating. I imagine that was a huge eye-opener.

[Good-day]

I was working for a doctor at the time, and had access to large amounts of data from the inserts that came with the drugs. So i came up with a hypothesis. It was that as X and Y (I think i used Prozac and Paxil, but i may have used Zoloft) were in the same "class of drugs," that is Selective Serotonin Uptake Inhibitors,


Katee, which of these drugs causes migraine headaches? Is it common practice that they do these studies without informed consent?

[Katee]

Katee, which of these drugs causes migraine headaches? Is it common practice that they do these studies without informed consent?

Good-day, i've not worked hospital or with doctors for a long time now, so i don't remember all the facts about the different meds, anymore. I will be at my office tomorrow where i have a Physician's Desk Reference (PDR), so if you had a question about a specific drug, i could look up the side effects for you.

In my opinion, most drugs have some pretty significant side effects that the studies and doctors tend to disregard.

If you are needing meds for depression, i would strongly recommend that you check out the book that Reesacat has been recommending, The Mood Cure by Julia Ross. It has excellent suggestions in it, and not just for moods, either.

I wasn't involved in the signing up of patients for those drug studies, but i do know they sign informed consents, to a degree. As they are testing new drugs, they don't know the full scope of how the drugs can react. I'm sure the informed consent includes a waver from holding the drug company liable for any problem. And the patients are told there is no guarantee that they will actually even receive the drug being tested.