There has been a new twist in the statin saga – the heated debate about whether these drugs are as safe and effective as the official view claims. Now it turns out that the senior academic who believes they have virtually no side effects has told a newspaper that he hasn’t actually done the analysis […]
Diabetes. Diet goes head to head with drug. Winner is….
November 15, 2014 by 20 Comments
Diabetes Day held last Friday had its priorities all wrong. Rather than calling for more innovative drug treatments its goal should have been to explore why diabetics continue to be treated by a system that ignores patients’ wishes and allows ineffective and dangerous treatments to proliferate, while safe and effective ones languish for lack of […]
Do doctors treat pensioners with snake oil?
August 24, 2014 by 13 Comments
A cheering and optimistic story about dementia at HealthInsightUK.org.When Obhi Chatterjee’s dad was diagnosed, Obhi set about researching the most plausible supplements and diets to help him. The piece tells you what they are and why they might work and also has useful advice for anyone wanting to follow his example. Two of the biggest […]
Statin critics cleared. Top statin advocate knuckles’ rapped
August 2, 2014 by 36 Comments
The long running spat between senior statin advocate Professor Sir Rory Collins and the British Medical Journal has come to a very satisfactory conclusion. His demand – that two papers challenging his claims about the safety and effectiveness of statins – be withdrawn, has been rejected by a committee specially set up to consider it. […]
Statin wars: an outbreak of medical transparency
June 13, 2014 by 10 Comments
Something remarkable happened earlier this week. Open warfare broke out between senior doctors over the benefits of a major government health policy. To prescribe or not to prescribe yet more statins to healthy people? That was the question. Details of the open letter to the head of NICE (the health value-for-money body) challenging its proposal […]
Homeopathy and the threat of endarkenment
April 28, 2014 by
Recently a post of mine describing attacks on homeopathy as “batty and arrogant” that I wrote last year was retweeted. This meant that again homeopathy’s hard-core detractors rushed out with lectures about the scientific method and the need for randomised trials (obvious) but yet again no attempt to actually deal with the issues I raised […]
Prescription drugs: ineffective and possibly dangerous
January 13, 2014 by 22 Comments
Apologies for the hysterical headline but it’s just the kind of irresponsible, ill-informed screamer that regularly heads stories about some new study that “proves” that vitamins are ineffective generators of expensive urine and may well be dangerous. If you want to know why such studies are all too often based on poor science and frequently […]
How do you know if the drug you’re on works? You don’t
January 7, 2014 by 2 Comments
One of the comforting myths about the powerful drugs used in modern medicine is that they are prescribed on the basis of good scientific evidence. However this is an illusion, which experts have known about for decades, because drug companies can prevent doctors and regulators from seeing unfavourable evidence. If you are being prescribed a […]
The dream that has become a nightmare
October 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Millions of us have a problem sleeping; it’s one of the top reasons for GP visits. Unfortunately for insomniacs the way it is generally treated provides a vivid case history of why our current system of evidence based medicine needs a radical overhaul. The dream of improving medicine with system that would separate good […]
Body of Evidence 
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