YOU ARE WHAT YOU READ
Be careful not to become Ignorant!
My teacher at University of Miami, Dr
Howard Lessner (olav ha shalom) once told me, noting my desire to devour
medical information:
Do not trust medical information that comes
free, read what you pay for.
Of course in 2014, we are inundated with
FREE medical information, in the case of Medical Practitioners, bogus journals,
just set up by Interest Groups to propagate the information they want to be
known. They are very seldom written by Doctors but by journalists who report
from various meetings and also summarize the articles.
This is where the manipulations begin
A notable headline in a Free “journal”
touted:
Not Inferior to Placebo
And this morning, this arrived:
Diet beverages pose no greater harm than
sugar sweetened
Do these journalists truly believe that
doctors who spend 10-12 years at University level to educate themselves are
that stupid?
What happens is as follows.
A journalist attends a meeting, in this
case the Obesity week, November 11-15, 2013 in Atlanta.
The culpable or innocent researchers may
have an abstract or oral presentation that allows them to twist the fact into
something else altogether.
The title was
Role of non-nutritive sweeteners in the
regulation of weight: Obesity facts and fiction
And they would interview the presenter who
is happy with the free publicity he is getting.
He said: when you stop drinking sugar-sweetened
beverages, you loose weight. Not a surprising remark!
People are better off drinking diet drinks
when compared to sugary drinks, but he added, it is not a strong effect!
That was converted into the headlines of
today:
Diet Beverages pose no greater harm than
sugar sweetened beverages.
When you read the article, whether the
original presenter meant it or not, it comes across as if he is employed by the
Aspartame manufacturers to promote diet drinks!
Reading medical nuances from journalists is
like taking a course in Pharmacology from the Drug Representatives.
You are what you read, so please make sure
that you subscribe to your specialty journals and also journals or magazines
which are peer reviewed and there are many of them making available excellent
research.
This morning, yet another paid Professor
Peon had this to write:
The SAVOR-TIMI 53 and EXAMINE trials were highlighted at the annual
European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress and European Association for the
Study of Diabetes (EASD) meeting and published inThe New England Journal of
Medicine. In SAVOR-TIMI 53, saxagliptin (Onglyza,
AstraZeneca/Bristol-Myers Squibb) added to standard care neither reduced nor increased risk for ischemic
events as compared with placebo in
patients with type 2 diabetes at high CV risk. In EXAMINE, alogliptin (Nesina,
Takeda Pharmaceuticals) added to standard care did not increase major adverse CV event rates as
compared with placebo in patients with type 2 diabetes and recent acute coronary syndrome.
And this, he touted, as an advance in the treatment of Diabetes! This is
the Non Inferiority to Placebo they are talking about!
