"My child took Tamiflu and almost died!"

[Rolfe]

At first, Tamiflu was the magic elixir to defend against the raging dragon of pandemic flu. However, as with most drugs, effects also bring side-effects. And when the disease itself is not quite the raging dragon it was originally feared to be, cost-benefit analyses may start to look less certain.

Article in today's paper.

It's interesting to watch the sudden swing of the scales, from wonder drug to Big-Pharma horror poison, happening right in front of our eyes.

The impending flu vaccine is another one. First we all want it, because we want to be "protected". Then someone observes that vaccines haven't had an entirely glowing press round here lately. And battle commences.

Thoughts?

Rolfe.

 

[Mashuna]

I like the Ben Goldacre piece from last week's Now Show (which I'm pretty sure you've already heard), where the Daily Mail were running consecutive campaigns. One in Britain, highlighting the evils of vaccination against cervical cancer, and one in Ireland, criticising the government for not providing this essential vaccine, thus condemning innocents to illness and possibly death.

It's almost as if they just want to shift the papers, and don't really care what they write. I'm sure that can't really be the case, can it?

 

[Ethan Thane Athen]

I never understood the drive towards Tamiflu. As I understand it, it doesn't prevent you getting flu, it just helps you fight it off - typically reducing the period you're ill by about a day...big deal!

As you say, once you factor in a (presumably) small chance of side-effects, there really seems no point. How much money has our already broke country invested in stock-piling this waste of time? And how much money have the makers pocketed from our stupidity and the over-reaction to swine-flu?

 

[Rolfe]

Hmmm, I'm not so sure about stupidity and over-reaction. If this one had turned out to have the pathogenicity of H5N1, we'd be singing a very different song.

Rolfe.

 

[Ethan Thane Athen]

I like the Ben Goldacre piece from last week's Now Show (which I'm pretty sure you've already heard), where the Daily Mail were running consecutive campaigns. One in Britain, highlighting the evils of vaccination against cervical cancer, and one in Ireland, criticising the government for not providing this essential vaccine, thus condemning innocents to illness and possibly death.

It's almost as if they just want to shift the papers, and don't really care what they write. I'm sure that can't really be the case, can it?

Although that edition of the Now Show did suffer from the absence of a Marcus Brigstock rant - quality ranting of the highest order.

 

[Ethan Thane Athen]

Hmmm, I'm not so sure about stupidity and over-reaction. If this one had turned out to have the pathogenicity of H5N1, we'd be singing a very different song.

Rolfe.

But (and I'm happy to be corrected here) there was never any evidence that it did. Right from the start it was acknowledged as being extremely infectious but not particularly dangerous...the worry was it might mutate into something more dangerous

 

[Darat]

At first, Tamiflu was the magic elixir to defend against the raging dragon of pandemic flu. However, as with most drugs, effects also bring side-effects. And when the disease itself is not quite the raging dragon it was originally feared to be, cost-benefit analyses may start to look less certain.

Article in today's paper.

It's interesting to watch the sudden swing of the scales, from wonder drug to Big-Pharma horror poison, happening right in front of our eyes.

The impending flu vaccine is another one. First we all want it, because we want to be "protected". Then someone observes that vaccines haven't had an entirely glowing press round here lately. And battle commences.

Thoughts?

Rolfe.

People in the media should be the first up against the wall* when the revolution comes. (*For being educated of course - what did you think I meant!)

It shows that the media is totally and utterly unconcerned about anything bar shifting their content.

Ben Goldacre covers this in his slot on last week's Now Show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beihglYP5KQ

 

[Rolfe]

But (and I'm happy to be corrected here) there was never any evidence that it did. Right from the start it was acknowledged as being extremely infectious but not particularly dangerous...the worry was it might mutate into something more dangerous

I think the initial information was a lot more scary with respect to the number of people said to have died in Mexico during the initial outbreak. Put that on top of the five-year-long state of preparedness for a pandemic of highly pathogenic influenza, and I'm not criticising.

I think they were right to dole out the Tamiflu initially, because the aim was to contain the little outbreaks as they sprang up. However, we're way beyond containment now, and as the virus has turned out to be of low pathogenicity and the Tamiflu to have side-effects, a re-evaluation of strategy is in order.

It's just a pity that such re-evaluation has to be accompanied by exactly the syndrome Ben described last week.

Rolfe.

 

[Darat]

(Tad CT section coming up.)

I think the media have been very frustrated with Swine Flue simply because the UK is (according to outside sources) one of the best resourced countries in the world for dealing with such a pandemic and has some of the best contingency planning. The media just hasn't been able to find any substantial and legitimate areas to drum up their typical hysteria.

Does the strategy need to re-evaluated? Well I'd rather leave that up to the people who have already proved their competency to make the call, rather than the likes of the Daily Mail.

 

[Ivor the Engineer]

(Tad CT section coming up.)

I think the media have been very frustrated with Swine Flue simply because the UK is (according to outside sources) one of the best resourced countries in the world for dealing with such a pandemic and has some of the best contingency planning. The media just hasn't been able to find any substantial and legitimate areas to drum up their typical hysteria.

<snip>

I agree. Jeremy Clarkson must be very disappointed he can't blame Gordon Brown for the whole thing.

 

[EHocking]

I like the Ben Goldacre piece from last week's Now Show (which I'm pretty sure you've already heard), where the Daily Mail were running consecutive campaigns. One in Britain, highlighting the evils of vaccination against cervical cancer, and one in Ireland, criticising the government for not providing this essential vaccine, thus condemning innocents to illness and possibly death.

It's almost as if they just want to shift the papers, and don't really care what they write. I'm sure that can't really be the case, can it?

Beat me to it. Available bbc in numerous formats at, http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/fricomedy/

It was a great rant.
(starts at 21:00 mins mark on the podcast)

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

At first, Tamiflu was the magic elixir to defend against the raging dragon of pandemic flu. However, as with most drugs, effects also bring side-effects. And when the disease itself is not quite the raging dragon it was originally feared to be, cost-benefit analyses may start to look less certain.

Article in today's paper.

It's interesting to watch the sudden swing of the scales, from wonder drug to Big-Pharma horror poison, happening right in front of our eyes.

From Rolfe's link;

GMTV star: My child took Tamiflu and almost died

"GMTV presenter Castle said his 16-year-old daughter, Georgina, suffered "respiratory collapse" after being "just handed" the drug during an outbreak of swine flu at her school in May."

and in Teh Grauniad

Swine flu: TV presenter's daughter 'almost died' after taking Tamiflu

"The health secretary, Andy Burnham, today defended giving the antiviral drug Tamiflu to children for swine flu as TV presenter Andrew Castle said his daughter "almost died" after taking it.

Burnham was confronted by Castle on GMTV after researchers said the antiviral drug's benefits did not outweigh its side-effects during the flu pandemic.

Castle said his older daughter, Georgina, had a "respiratory collapse" and "suffered very heavily" after being "just handed" the drug without a proper diagnosis.

The presenter said: "I can tell you that my child – who was not diagnosed at all – she had asthma, she took Tamiflu and almost died.""


Let me repeat the title of this thread, which is a paraphrase of those headlines.

My child took Tamiflu and almost died!

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. The girl took the drug and almost dies, but it looks most unlikely that the two were causally related.

The weird thing is that the stories have been written and headlined so as to blame the drug, but even with that ridiculous spin being applied, the real story seeps through. The actual locus for debate is that the child was prescribed remotely and given the drug but actually had a serious underlying health problem and the flu triage process acted as an obstacle both to her initial assessment and subsequent access to treatment. This is a risk of managing a system for mass-assessment of a population-level disease outbreak.

It has nothing, nada, diddly, zilch to do with side effects of Tamiflu and is a rather more subtle and important thing to report than was implied by the stupid Freddie Starr ate my Hamster headline.

 

[MRC_Hans]

At first, Tamiflu was the magic elixir to defend against the raging dragon of pandemic flu. However, as with most drugs, effects also bring side-effects. And when the disease itself is not quite the raging dragon it was originally feared to be, cost-benefit analyses may start to look less certain.
*snip*
Thoughts?

Rolfe.

I think the key to the matter lies in the words I bolded. Of course, there will be hype, but once the disease is downgraded from a killer to an inconvinence, the whole equation changes.

To cut things coarsely, we would consider a medicine against Ebola with a 10% risk of killing you a miracle, but a headache pill .......

Hans

 

[Badly Shaved Monkey]

I've not seen any clear explanation of why the initial death rate in Mexico was so high. Misreporting? Mis-diagnosis? Vulnerable population? Inadequate medical services?

 

[MRC_Hans]

From Rolfe's link;

*snip*

Post hoc ergo propter hoc. The girl took the drug and almost dies, but it looks most unlikely that the two were causally related.

The weird thing is that the stories have been written and headlined so as to blame the drug, but even with that ridiculous spin being applied, the real story seeps through. The actual locus for debate is that the child was prescribed remotely and given the drug but actually had a serious underlying health problem and the flu triage process acted as an obstacle both to her initial assessment and subsequent access to treatment. This is a risk of managing a system for mass-assessment of a population-level disease outbreak.

It has nothing, nada, diddly, zilch to do with side effects of Tamiflu and is a rather more subtle and important thing to report than was implied by the stupid Freddie Starr ate my Hamster headline.

Yes and no. One of the dangers inherent in the situation (an impending epidemic and an available drug) is just the thing that happened: Another ailment was mistaken for the epidemic disease, and wrongly treated accordingly. I'm sure we could find such cases in every epidemic.

You can say that this is not the fault of the drug per se, but it is certainly a risk inherent in the whole complex, of which the drug is a part.

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

I've not seen any clear explanation of why the initial death rate in Mexico was so high. Misreporting? Mis-diagnosis? Vulnerable population? Inadequate medical services?

Probably a combination. One thing for sure is under-reporting of non-fatal cases: There may have been millions of unnoticed cases.

This is, btw. a likely complication for all initial reports of outbreaks: The first cases that come to attention are the serious ones, where patients are hospitalized. Other cases are unnoticed, but once there is focus on that disease, the reporting rate rises.

Hans

 

[Soapy Sam]

And the most horrific aspect of the entire affair is-


The ghouls have exhumed Pennington again!

 

[Rolfe]

I think Pennington is constantly clawing at the roof of his coffin like an extra from Buffy, to be fair. I never knew such a self-publicist.

Rolfe.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

Easy. Drugs are bad. And it's even easier to find people who will blame a drug for something even if it was actually the disease that caused it. A reporter has their work cut out for them if they are more biased towards that "drugs are bad" ideology. Not many people will call them on it, and even more will write in to congratulate the reporter on their awesome in depth revelations and factual story. Now, here, write about my homeopathy and how it cured people of the flu! No side effects! Er, that one had respiratory problems too, and yeah, had an underlying condition (but people with asthma NEVER have respiratory issues unless they take drugs/Tamiflu!)... but my magic water cured them in the end since it is not a drug and couldn't cause any respiratory collapse.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

I never understood the drive towards Tamiflu. As I understand it, it doesn't prevent you getting flu, it just helps you fight it off - typically reducing the period you're ill by about a day...big deal!

As you say, once you factor in a (presumably) small chance of side-effects, there really seems no point. How much money has our already broke country invested in stock-piling this waste of time? And how much money have the makers pocketed from our stupidity and the over-reaction to swine-flu?

I don't have the actual numbers, but didn't they find more people with underlying condition or were pregnant survived the flu if they took Tamiflu? Those are the people this flu bug is killing, afterall. So, they lived and had the flu one less day?

Here are some numbers:
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200610/02/eng20061002_308193.html

According to a research team from the Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Canada, the drug could reduce the mortality by 71 percent while treating adults infected with seasonal flu.

http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicin...l-Tamiflu-A-Cost-Effective-Treatment-22657-1/

According to modelling research presented by Beate Sander, University of Toronto, Canada, a stockpile of tamiflu sufficient to cover 65% of a countrys population could cut deaths by approximately half.

...This equates to a cost saving of 70,000 dollar per 1,000 population which would save 21 billion dollar in the US alone versus no intervention.