American Medical System and Vioxx

[ponderingturtle]

You mean press like the New York Times?

Wow an argument from authority with out even the authority part.

 

[fls]

Cayce:
Thousands of satisfied customers cannot be wrong.

Vioxx:
Millions of satisfied customers were wrong.

Linda

 

[ponderingturtle]

That's apologia of the highest order..it was marketed as a go out and dance again drug just as Celebrex is.

Ad campaigns do not equal perscribed. Or are you not aware that the word marketed and perscribed are not synonyms?

 

[ponderingturtle]

Did Cayce know "all of the ramifications" of the treatments he advocated? What tests had he carried out?

Of course he did, he could see the future. We need more precognition in our medical practices.

 

[Rodney]

How would you know? You seem to think that failing to look for problems means that the problems are not there. Yet, if we applied that same sort of thinking to medical treatments, then there would be no problem with the use of Vioxx. You started this thread with an example of why we need to actively go looking for problems, because otherwise we will not find them. And then you follow it up with a case of not looking for problems. You're not making any sense here.

Linda

There were many people who were looking for problems with Cayce's diagnoses and remedies. In 1935, Cayce gave a reading for a girl, prescribing a remedy that the girl's physician disagreed with. The physician called the police and reported that Cayce was practicing medicine without a license, leading to Cayce's arrest. This incident is set forth in some detail by Sidney Kirkpatrick in An American Prophet and is mentioned at http://edgarcayceclinicaz.com/chrono.html

The point is that, if Cayce had prescribed a remedy that seemingly led to a client's death, that would have been a big news story, particularly after Cayce had achieved some degree of fame. However, I cannot find even one such story amidst the numerous accounts of Cayce's remedies having proven effective, after the conventional medicine of his time had proven ineffective.

 

[Cynic]

Cayce:
Thousands of satisfied customers cannot be wrong.

Vioxx:
Millions of satisfied customers were wrong.

Linda

Don't forget:

Vioxx: thousands of dead customers elected not to participate in the survey.

 

[Cynic]

Well, if they were trying to hide it, they didn't do a very good job, because my colleagues and I knew about the possible connection and none of us had inside information. Merck marketing isn't the only source of information for physicians.

The data and studies I'm referring to weren't published. Did you and all of those doctors have access to this unpublished data?

 

[fls]

There were many people who were looking for problems with Cayce's diagnoses and remedies. In 1935, Cayce gave a reading for a girl, prescribing a remedy that the girl's physician disagreed with. The physician called the police and reported that Cayce was practicing medicine without a license, leading to Cayce's arrest. This incident is set forth in some detail by Sidney Kirkpatrick in An American Prophet and is mentioned at http://edgarcayceclinicaz.com/chrono.html

You did it again. You claim that it was typical for people to critically examine Cayce's readings, and then you provide a story showing that it was so atypical, that a single example warrants a detailed account.

The point is that, if Cayce had prescribed a remedy that seemingly led to a client's death, that would have been a big news story, particularly after Cayce had achieved some degree of fame. However, I cannot find even one such story amidst the numerous accounts of Cayce's remedies having proven effective, after the conventional medicine of his time had proven ineffective.

Just like Vioxx. Vioxx use was not temporally associated with any deaths. There were no news stories about a client's death after the prescription of Vioxx as a remedy. Looking for news stories clearly fails as a way to discover whether or not a remedy is harmful.

Linda

 

[fls]

The data and studies I'm referring to weren't published. Did you and all of those doctors have access to this unpublished data?

If you read the third and fourth links in my initial post, the authors explain why the unpublished information was immaterial. Including the 3 myocardial infarctions and 1 stroke which occurred after the study was finished led to only trivial changes in the results and did not change any of the conclusions which could be drawn. It was the results from other trials, and from the epidemiologic studies (and they were published) which provided enough information to form more reliable conclusions.

Linda

 

[Cynic]

What then could explain paying academic researchers to rubber stamp in-house reports and the fabrication of entire publications in support of Vioxx by Elsevier?

 

[fls]

What then could explain paying academic researchers to rubber stamp in-house reports and the fabrication of entire publications in support of Vioxx by Elsevier?

That has nothing to do with Vioxx. It's a common marketing practice from pharmaceutical companies to create 'educational' organizations in order to form journals which publish research and opinion pieces in support of their products. Then they hand them out or mail them out to physicians. They're called Throwaway Journals, because that's what you do with them when they show up on your desk.

Linda

 

[Rodney]

You did it again. You claim that it was typical for people to critically examine Cayce's readings, and then you provide a story showing that it was so atypical, that a single example warrants a detailed account.

The detailed account was provided by Kirkpatrick because Cayce was arrested. That was one of only two times that occurred (the other time was for fortune-telling), and so it was a rather big deal. But I'm still trying to figure out how, with all the skeptics who have examined Cayce's medical readings -- both contemporaneously and after the fact -- they can't come up with an instance where his remedy killed, or even caused harm, to one of his clients.

Just like Vioxx. Vioxx use was not temporally associated with any deaths. There were no news stories about a client's death after the prescription of Vioxx as a remedy. Looking for news stories clearly fails as a way to discover whether or not a remedy is harmful.

I grant you that, the day after John Q. Public died of a heart attack after taking Vioxx, there was no headline reading "John Q. Public dies of a heart attack after taking Vioxx." However, an investigation found that Vioxx was associated with a significantly increased risk of heart attacks. Do you know of evidence that any of Cayce's remedies were associated with an increased risk of heart attacks or other serious medical risks?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It is also unfortunate that it had the side-effects it did. My doctor has never found anything that worked as well for my arthritis. Almost completely alleviated the symptoms.

I can't think of the name of the book, but I recently saw an interview with an author who wrote about risk perception and talked about the benefit of VIOXX being lost in the over reacted to risk. Many things which are more lethal have perfectly acceptable risk in terms of the public view.

The book title was one word, I think, it didn't contain the word risk in the title, and it was definitely a book that would be of interest to the skeptical community.

I'm sure the name will come to me eventually.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The main point is that drugs are often-times prescribed without knowing all of the ramifications of their use, and sometimes those ramifications prove extremely deleterious, if not fatal.

I don't suppose it has dawned on you that you likely don't know all the risks you will face when you get out of bed each day?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

....

This was doubly screwed up in the case of Vioxx because the doctors have a similar relationship with pharmaceutical companies and the FDA and they weren't fully informed either. ....

Doctors have a patient provider relationship with the FDA and the pharmaceutical companies?????????????????

 

[Cynic]

That has nothing to do with Vioxx. It's a common marketing practice from pharmaceutical companies to create 'educational' organizations in order to form journals which publish research and opinion pieces in support of their products. Then they hand them out or mail them out to physicians. They're called Throwaway Journals, because that's what you do with them when they show up on your desk.

Common or not, it sucks.

 

[Cynic]

If you read the third and fourth links in my initial post, the authors explain why the unpublished information was immaterial. Including the 3 myocardial infarctions and 1 stroke which occurred after the study was finished led to only trivial changes in the results and did not change any of the conclusions which could be drawn. It was the results from other trials, and from the epidemiologic studies (and they were published) which provided enough information to form more reliable conclusions.

I'm just going to have to concede this one to you. My previous research was apparently insufficient and further review of the available resources only supports your own understanding of the matter.

The larger point remains, however. Had Vioxx not been unnecessarily fast-tracked by the FDA, early cardiovascular data from the VIGOR study, which were already interesting enough to cause the researchers to take notice of by the time the drug was approved, might have delayed or prevented it release so that more conclusive results could have been had. Before a year had even passed from the time pf approval and the VIGOR study concluded, it was known that people were far more likely to suffer an arrest or stroke on Vioxx than naproxin and Merck's considered opinion that it wasn't Vioxx that was dangerous by naproxin that had a protective effect is nothing short of assuming the position that favors your revenue stream.

While the desirability of having a dangerous drug on the market is debatable in comparison to what might happen to patients that don't have it, that's nothing I've been disputing. What I've been defending is Rodney's suggestion that drugs are and have been prescribed without doctors or patients being aware of what those risks are, and my future interpretation/elaboration that in the case of Vioxx, that occurred in a manner that was preventable. It took an inordinate amount of time to get proper labeling on the packaging and literature for Vioxx detailing the discovered risks after they were known. Patients, who are not expected to be aware of all the details, were heavily marketed toward and the risks downplayed, not mentioned, or claimed to be an effect of all NSAIDs before any such claim could be verified. Doctors, while fully capable of reading all the papers produced concerning the drug, were still subjected to calls from Merck explaining away objections raised by those studies with arguments and downplaying negative interpretations, even as the company was aware that evidence continued to mount against it's own official line.

The bottom line in all of this, however, is the fact that the reason there are labels and literature associated with drugs is to facilitate the education of doctors and their patients as to the risks and benefits of the drugs they're taking and the literature and labeling of Vioxx for a very long time did not reflect the dangers that were known, regardless of interpretation.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=192

 

[Mojo]

The detailed account was provided by Kirkpatrick because Cayce was arrested.

But not until many years after the event. And this is still only for a single case. Do you have evidence for contemporary and systematic investigation of the consequences of Cayce's "treatments"?

 

[MRC_Hans]

The point is that, if Cayce had prescribed a remedy that seemingly led to a client's death, that would have been a big news story, particularly after Cayce had achieved some degree of fame. However, I cannot find even one such story amidst the numerous accounts of Cayce's remedies having proven effective, after the conventional medicine of his time had proven ineffective.

If Cayce is a homeopath, his remedies will not have directly led to anybody's death. Homeopathic remedies are harmless. So are most other alternative meds.

This is another clinch: Proponents of alternative meds love to push the dangers of conventional medicines and compare them with the generally harmless alternative meds. Folks, this is because alternative meds in general, and homeopathic remedies in particular, are without ANY EFFECT at all.

This is like comparing real, sharp knives with plastic toy knives. Sure, nobody is ever cut or killed by a plastic toy knife.

- The numerous stories as you call it, is what we call anecdotes.

Hans