H
Herman Rubin
Guest
In article <[email protected]>,
(null) <[email protected]> wrote:
>>life-blood, delivering revenues of $US3 billion ($4.5 billion) a year.
>>For the women taking HRT, long-term use has delivered increased risks
>>of breast cancer, blood clots, heart attacks and strokes. And
>>according to new results released this morning, HRT also damages the
>>brain, doubling a woman's chances of developing dementia.
> Herman said it wasn't so bad: it did a lot of good. Come on
>Herman.
I never said it did not have any bad effects. One needs to
match the bad and the good.
>>In July last year the Journal of the American Medical Association
>>(JAMA) reported the results of a trial involving 16,000 healthy women
>>aged 50 and over. Almost entirely funded by the US Government, the
>>study was scheduled to run for eight years but was stopped after five
>>because it was found HRT was causing an increase in heart attacks,
>>strokes and breast cancer.
> Ask Oreck, Herman and our Florida ob about how minor these
>problems were compared to the benefits and profits.
HRT definitely helps with many female problems; I will have
to let women clarify this. It also helps raise bone
density, and raise it substantially; low bone density is
well-known to increase a fair number of risks. These were
seen immediately.
Long-term problems can only be found by long-term tests.
With enough cases, statistical significance is easy to
get; this does not say how important the effect is. If
we have 10 in the experimental group and 1 in the control
group, of equal size, getting a bad result, the usual
significance level does not change much if there are
100 or 1000 or 10000 or more in each group.
>>Now comes this morning's revelations. A Wyeth-funded study published
>>in today's JAMA finds that taking HRT doubles an older woman's risk of
>>dementia, including the well-known form, Alzheimer's disease.
> But as long as their bones are stronger, it ok, right Herman?
>>Again, in absolute terms the chances of developing dementia were not
>>high taking HRT for four years doubled a women's chances, from about 1
>>per cent to 2 per cent. But the researchers pointed out that the
>>dementia problem began to appear in the first year of the study,
>>concluding that "the risks outweigh the benefits".
> Herman will say 1% ain't much.
>>accumulating evidence that the drugs were causing heart disease.
>>As previously reported in The Australian Financial Review, it is not
>>surprising that the booklet was unbalanced and misleading: early
>>drafts came from Wyeth and its PR firm, Hill and Knowlton.
> That is the medical/industrial complex. Be careful: Oreck is
>going to say, "You hate doctors. Otherwise you would not post
>this article. You'd ignore it."
>>The belief that HRT held great benefits wasn't fabricated, it was
>>based on evidence from "observational" studies that found women taking
>>HRT were healthier. But as any medical scientist knows, this
>>lesser-quality evidence is often weak, and in this case it was grossly
>>misleading: the women in those "observational" studies who took HRT
>>were healthier anyway, it wasn't the HRT that made them healthier.
> Any researcher can talk about self-selection as the most
>powerful of all obsevations. And there is a terrific and
>on-going class bias in American medicine, where what you get is
>what you can afford. If you can afford more, you get more.
>But more is more harmful than doing nothing. One more example of
>overdiagnosis, overtreatment and over profits.
>>Top-quality randomised controlled trials testing the drug against a
>>placebo or other alternative are a much better way of getting to the
>>truth about risks and benefits, as has finally happened with HRT.
> Treatments come in before evaluation. Prostate cancer is next
>up for debunking, but the emotions are really bad on this one
>too.
>--
>George Conklin, Durham, NC: Medicare For All Ages
>If HMOs ran the post office, the AMA (American Mail Association)
>would declare that getting mail was a privilege, not a right
>and 43 million Americans would get no mail delivery.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Deptartment of Statistics, Purdue University
[email protected] Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
(null) <[email protected]> wrote:
>>life-blood, delivering revenues of $US3 billion ($4.5 billion) a year.
>>For the women taking HRT, long-term use has delivered increased risks
>>of breast cancer, blood clots, heart attacks and strokes. And
>>according to new results released this morning, HRT also damages the
>>brain, doubling a woman's chances of developing dementia.
> Herman said it wasn't so bad: it did a lot of good. Come on
>Herman.
I never said it did not have any bad effects. One needs to
match the bad and the good.
>>In July last year the Journal of the American Medical Association
>>(JAMA) reported the results of a trial involving 16,000 healthy women
>>aged 50 and over. Almost entirely funded by the US Government, the
>>study was scheduled to run for eight years but was stopped after five
>>because it was found HRT was causing an increase in heart attacks,
>>strokes and breast cancer.
> Ask Oreck, Herman and our Florida ob about how minor these
>problems were compared to the benefits and profits.
HRT definitely helps with many female problems; I will have
to let women clarify this. It also helps raise bone
density, and raise it substantially; low bone density is
well-known to increase a fair number of risks. These were
seen immediately.
Long-term problems can only be found by long-term tests.
With enough cases, statistical significance is easy to
get; this does not say how important the effect is. If
we have 10 in the experimental group and 1 in the control
group, of equal size, getting a bad result, the usual
significance level does not change much if there are
100 or 1000 or 10000 or more in each group.
>>Now comes this morning's revelations. A Wyeth-funded study published
>>in today's JAMA finds that taking HRT doubles an older woman's risk of
>>dementia, including the well-known form, Alzheimer's disease.
> But as long as their bones are stronger, it ok, right Herman?
>>Again, in absolute terms the chances of developing dementia were not
>>high taking HRT for four years doubled a women's chances, from about 1
>>per cent to 2 per cent. But the researchers pointed out that the
>>dementia problem began to appear in the first year of the study,
>>concluding that "the risks outweigh the benefits".
> Herman will say 1% ain't much.
>>accumulating evidence that the drugs were causing heart disease.
>>As previously reported in The Australian Financial Review, it is not
>>surprising that the booklet was unbalanced and misleading: early
>>drafts came from Wyeth and its PR firm, Hill and Knowlton.
> That is the medical/industrial complex. Be careful: Oreck is
>going to say, "You hate doctors. Otherwise you would not post
>this article. You'd ignore it."
>>The belief that HRT held great benefits wasn't fabricated, it was
>>based on evidence from "observational" studies that found women taking
>>HRT were healthier. But as any medical scientist knows, this
>>lesser-quality evidence is often weak, and in this case it was grossly
>>misleading: the women in those "observational" studies who took HRT
>>were healthier anyway, it wasn't the HRT that made them healthier.
> Any researcher can talk about self-selection as the most
>powerful of all obsevations. And there is a terrific and
>on-going class bias in American medicine, where what you get is
>what you can afford. If you can afford more, you get more.
>But more is more harmful than doing nothing. One more example of
>overdiagnosis, overtreatment and over profits.
>>Top-quality randomised controlled trials testing the drug against a
>>placebo or other alternative are a much better way of getting to the
>>truth about risks and benefits, as has finally happened with HRT.
> Treatments come in before evaluation. Prostate cancer is next
>up for debunking, but the emotions are really bad on this one
>too.
>--
>George Conklin, Durham, NC: Medicare For All Ages
>If HMOs ran the post office, the AMA (American Mail Association)
>would declare that getting mail was a privilege, not a right
>and 43 million Americans would get no mail delivery.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Deptartment of Statistics, Purdue University
[email protected] Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558