The terminology we use about medical drugs can be misleading
“Efficacy and safety” and “benefits and risks” of drugs are misleading terms. Words matter. They influence people’s decisions about drugs, other treatments and other interventions. We should therefore abandon misleading terminology and speak about benefits and harms instead. See my BMJ article here.
How shall we help patients withdraw from depression drugs?
Our systematic review of 13 randomised trials (2085 patients) showed that the length of taper was highly predictive for the risk of relapse (P = 0.00001). All the studies we reviewed confounded withdrawal symptoms with relapse; did not use hyperbolic tapering; withdrew the depression drug too fast in a linear fashion; and stopped it entirely when receptor occupancy was still high. The true proportion of patients on depression drugs who can stop safely without relapse is likely considerably higher than the 50% we found. Offering cognitive behaviour therapy allowed significantly more patients to become drug free without relapse compared with tapering in standard clinical care (P = 0.002). Our full review is here and it is also up at MedRiv.
Bipolar disorder in young people is often a misdiagnosis
By Peter C Gøtzsche
The first sentence in a BMJ article about drug monitoring for bipolar disorder is: “Bipolar disorder often affects a younger population (peak onset between 15 and 19 years)” (1).
How is this possible when bipolar disorder in children and young people was virtually unknown 50 years ago? Because bipolar disorder in young people is mainly a misdiagnosis that stems from confusing the harms of stimulants with the disorder. …
Bipolar disorder in young people is often a misdiagnosisRead More »
How to lose weight in an evidence-based way
By Peter C Gøtzsche, Professor emeritus, Institute for Scientific Freedom
Dieting to lose weight is a big industry, but much of the advice offered is not evidence-based. Being a scientist, I reasoned that, to lose weight, you only need to count your calorie intake and expenditure, put it in a spreadsheet, and ensure there is a deficit every day. I shall explain how to do it and provide a spreadsheet you can use. Read more.
Should I get chemotherapy for cancer? Probably not
Peter C Gøtzsche, Institute for Scientific Freedom
If you get cancer, one of the most important questions is to decide if you should accept or decline chemotherapy. By far most patients accept chemotherapy, likely because they think that if it wasn’t worthwhile, it wouldn’t be offered.
This is a mistake. …
Should I get chemotherapy for cancer? Probably notRead More »
Book review: Critical Psychiatry Textbook
In my book, I describe what is wrong with the psychiatry textbooks used by students of medicine, psychology and psychiatry. Much of what is claimed amounts to scientific dishonesty. I conclude that biological psychiatry has not led to anything of use, and that psychiatry as a medical specialty is so harmful that it should be disbanded.
In a book review that just came out in the journal Psychosis, Tom Federn, licensed clinical social worker from New York, notes how shocked he became when he read my book. He feels ashamed to be part of a profession involving the gross mistreatment of so-called psychiatric patients. His book review is here.
”YouSee er nogle værre banditter”
Sådan sagde min ellers afdæmpede bankrådgiver, efter at YouSee havde chikaneret mig så meget, at jeg ville sikre mig, at de ikke kunne trække et beløb, jeg ikke skyldte dem, via betalingsservice med tilbagevirkende kraft.
Jeg opsagde i en e-mail mit telefon- og bredbåndsabonnement 22/8 til udløb 30/9, men fik til svar, at jeg ”ønskede” at opsige et af deres produkter. Nej, jeg havde opsagt det!
YouSee’s forretningsmetoder ligner et bevidst forsøg på at franarre kunderne penge, de ikke skylder, ved at sprede et røgslør, der forvirrer kunderne og er fuldstændig gakket. Den slags skal udstilles, hvilket jeg hermed har gjort. Læs mere.
Unjustified attack on randomised trials and evidence-based medicine from an epidemiologist
By Peter C Gøtzsche
Two weeks ago, US epidemiologist Harvey Risch published a paper criticising evidence-based medicine (EBM) and its reliance on randomised clinical trials (RCTs) quite substantially. At the same time, he praised observational studies based on arguments that are untenable.
After Gordon Guyatt had coined the term EBM in the early 1990s, some prominent epidemiologists provided similar criticisms of it as Risch. It is therefore worthwhile to discuss Risch’s key arguments. …
Chest pain during exercise – or how to avoid getting stented
Inserting stents into people with chest pain during exercise is big business. But is it also beneficial for the patients? This is doubtful. The reliability and usefulness of exercise stress tests and coronary angiography is also doubtful in relation to deciding whether a patient needs stents or not. As this will surprise most people, I have decided to republish a section about these issues in my 2019 book, Survival in an overmedicated world: Find the evidence yourself. You can read this section here.
Pure nonsense about the secrets of water on national Danish TV
By Peter C Gøtzsche
9 Dec 2022
Many alternative practitioners claim that the water in homeopathic drops can remember what was once in it, even though there isn’t a single active molecule left after all the dilutions. In 2019, national Danish TV broadcast similar nonsense in the programme, “The secrets of water,” under the heading Nature, Science and Technology.
It was claimed that water flowing past a closed container of “Grander water” extracted from a mountain spring in the Alps can render the water more orderly and a better cleaning agent. The miraculous alp water, which is sold in a household version for the handsome sum of €1000, defies the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which states that the entropy (the degree of disorder) in a closed system will always increase with time unless you add energy to the system.
Some Germans claimed that with the power of thought you can influence water in a closed container several thousand kilometers away. This was documented by graphs that ran roughly in parallel until people started thinking about the container. Then the graphs diverged, quite considerably so.
In the broadcast, there were interviews with Danish researchers who came up with some generalities that if this were true, the perceptions in the natural sciences would need to be revised. Sure, and if one day we saw a man from space kidnapping people from Earth and transporting them away in a spaceship, so-called alien abduction, there is also something we need to revise.
Science is under attack. It is not helpful that national TV stations, whose economy all citizens need to contribute to involuntarily, publishes utter nonsense under the guise of scientific credibility. The astrophysicist Carl Sagan wrote a whole book about popular nonsense, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. We should take care that this candle does not get blown out.