Reply #6: 90% entirely IMO. [View All]

[Stevepol]

I'm not proseltyzing, just saying what I think. The figure has got to be high or we'd be soon buried in new drugs. I'd be interested to find out myself. I read an article in Mother Jones a few years back about how the drugs for depression, when the clinical studies were looked at didn't do much better than the placebo did, and the small difference cd be explained by the fact that the drugs caused people to sleep more so they generally self-reported less depression (on whatever scale was used, not the Beck scale in this case I think) since when people sleep more they report less depression in general.

And that was every one of the top 6 anti-depression drugs.

I saw a recent repeat of the same study of anti-depressants with apparently a similar result.

Here's a link to just one of these studies: http://www.mercola.com/2002/jul/31/antidepressants.htm

I'm sure you could find many more in a google search of your own.

Pharma of course will deny this and offer some other figures. In the end, whatever you think helps you, helps you.

Surgery: I was thinking of having seen also several studies that indicated that too many heart bypasses are done.

Here's a link for the heart bypasses: http://www.whale.to/m/quotes20.html

Again, I'm sure you could find a lot more with a google search.

And I saw recently (twice in fact) a book reading and discussion and Q&A on C-Span by the author of a book called "Overtreated" about how the best results in medicine are generally produced by smaller slalaried clinics where the doctors help each other and focus on the patient and aren't specialists vying to use whatever surgical intervention they are best trained in or anxious to use whatever newfangled diagnostic tool they've just spent a gazillion dollars on. According to the author, in the US, the Mayo clinic is a good example of the right level and quality of treatment with good outcomes, and UCLA Medical Ctr came in close to the bottom, even tho (and maybe because) it had the highest quality, ultra-sophisticated diagnostic equipment and many specialists on staff, each one highly qualified and thus rightly charging an arm and a leg for their services. The author said the best (most effective plus least costly) approaches in Europe and probably the world were in Sweden and France. Sweden profits by its ability to systematize the thing better, while France is more like the US in that there's more variety, etc.

Here's a link for the book: http://www.amazon.com/Overtreated-Medicine-Making-Sicker-Poorer/dp/1582345805

Excellent talk by the way. If it comes back on C-Span, try to catch it if you're interested in this stuff.

In any case, take the 90% as pure speculation, and remember 71.2% of all statistics are made up on the spot anyway. It's very hard to quantify health figures anyway. You may have to make up your own mind about it and then come up with your own statistics.

Later, I talked to a doctor friend here and asked him about the thesis of the book "Overtreated," and he confirmed that in the hospital where he worked when the machines are there, they will be used, whether they're actually called for in the specific case or not. It's the principle, if you build it they will come.

If I could add one more thing: I think you can take it as a rule of thumb that when you have free enterprize and health care bedding down together, you're not going to get very good medicine overall. Again, that's just IMO, but I think it would be well supported by statistics from countries which have variations of nationalized health care systems compared with the US in terms of treatment outcomes.