By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Steven_Gillman] Steven Gillman With government regulation and the FDA approval process, many people think that the drug research done by pharmaceutical companies is honest. Maybe some of it is. But the Guardian newspaper recently reported on many systematic reviews which demonstrate that pharmaceutical industry studies show positive results far more often than those funded by independent sources. Is this coincidence? Do they just happen to get more of the results that they want? It seems improbable. But it's not likely that drug companies directly tamper with clinical drug trials in any criminal way. Nor are they likely to change the reported results afterwards either. That kind of blatant dishonesty is probably very rare in drug research, because it isn't necessary. The drug companies have more subtle ways to get the results they are hoping for. To begin with, a company can design a study in a biased way. A simple example: even if a study is theoretically double-blind, a company could create procedures which let doctors administering a new pharmaceutical know who is getting it, versus who is getting a placebo instead. Just the expectation of doctors that a patient's condition will improve often results in more reported improvement. It's a fairly crude manipulation, but there are certainly other ways to design a study to increase the chance of positive results being shown. Perhaps the most common way to manipulate the results of drug research, is to selectively report those results. Several recent investigations show that this is common. Data that doesn't support the conclusions the companies want is often hidden or thrown out. Why does this matter? Suppose a new drug is given to ten groups of people who share a given disease or condition. Now suppose that on average, the people in five of the groups have good results, but the subjects in the other five groups get worse or have no improvement. People often get better or worse for many reasons, so this is common. It is why many trials are necessary to have statistically significant results. What if in this case, the company decided that only the five trials with positive results are important enough to report, and they quietly get rid of the data from the others. A drug that has no real benefit on average now appears to have helped in every research trial - at least all those that the rest of the world hears about. It is bad science, of course, but unfortunately it is just one of the ways that pharmaceutical companies play with data to get the results they want to see. Scientists have been recommending a simple and inexpensive solution to this problem for decades: a compulsory international trials register. If companies want to use the results of any drug research trials to get a new pharmaceutical approved, they would have to register the trial before it begins. With this simple registry, trials that don't give the result wanted can't just disappear - they have to all be accounted for. Of course the drug companies are fighting against this simple idea. It doesn't give them as much control over the research. For now, we can expect the continuation of dishonest drug research. Copyright Steve Gillman. Want to know a secret? How about hundreds of the best kept secrets - powerful knowledge few people know? Get a free subscription to the [http://www.99lies.com] 99 Lies Newsletter, at [http://www.99lies.com] http://www.99lies.com Article Source: [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Steven_Gillman ] http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steven_Gillman [http://ezinearticles.com/?How-To-Distort-Drug-Research&id=598875 ] http://EzineArticles.com/?How-To-Distort-Drug-Research&id=598875 buy phentermine us pharmacy
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