Posted by Todd (64.34.202.197) on April 28, 2001 at 00:47:37:
In Reply to: and for cure? posted by dougW on April 28, 2001 at 00:22:04:
Cures, indeed meds in general, would get us into a whole bunch of other areas. Side effects and the placebo effect are the two most obvious.
Sides are an interesting discussion since I think a lot of people don't realize how the FDA (in the US) impacts the reporting of so-called side effects. If you dig deep enough into the patient leaflets that come with meds, you'll find the actual statistics on the occurence of each side effect. (Nope, not on every leaflet and I can't explain why)
It pretty much boils down to this - if one person in a clinical trial reports getting a headache after taking whatever drug, it gets reported as a potential side effect. Hence the fact that aspirin, tylenol, ibuprofen and, yes, Imitrex can "cause" headaches.
What we actually have in these cases is a combination of governmental nitpicking, lousy statistics and legal paranoia.
If anyone other than doug is still hanging in with all this bs :-) what I mean is that merely having a headache after taking aspirin, Imitrex or whatever is not evidence of a causal relationship.
An interesting tangent to this discussion is the recent study that showed that administering a placebo can actually result in "pain free" dental work. Never underestimate the power of the human mind - it can convince you of almost anything, which isn't always a good thing.
Okay, I only meant to tell doug that his request for a rewrite would require another dissertation and here I am "disserting" again.
With no criticism intended towards anyone on CHMB, I will say that in the "old days" here we had a lot more of these type of "technical" or "scientific" threads. We've lost that for whatever reason. No reason they can't mutually coexist (pun intended but admittedly bad) with the humor, support, etc. Perhaps, (hmmmmmm) one of the reasons many "oldtimers" are becoming impatient answering the same old questions over and over again is that "newbies" who don't look past the current MB (i.e. into the Archives) don't see much of CH help-related value.
KTSSU,
T