An AMAZING new medicine has either already been released or just coming out. That is the claim in all the TV advertisements and pharmaceutical detail men and women.
We have a new drug that is non-inferior to something else, so it has to be good. Often the question is: is it better, safer, cost-effective, has fewer side effects, etc.?
Occasionally there is a fantastic new drug, but I find that mostly it is just a variation on existing drugs that is questionably needed, if at all. Can the literature be trusted to be unbiased? Who performed the studies, and who sponsored the papers? Were there any studies that did not favor the drug for some reason (rare in our current academic environment)? Unfavorable studies are defunded and not published.
Unfortunately, this represents the state of current medical research. It is funded by either NIH or Pharmaceutical companies with a vested interest in the results. An example of which is the research into Covid treatment. Existing therapies and re-purposed drugs were ignored or even banned because of the need to show that only one or several therapies were best and that any research that didn’t support this was ignored, declined to be published, or quashed.
The science that is quoted is not true science. True science asks questions and reports on findings, regardless of favorable vs. unfavorable outcomes. It is reproducible and is trusted by other researchers to further the understanding of the issue at hand.
This juxtaposes today’s research that is goal-directed, limited to only answering certain questions, and frequently uses statistical gymnastics to arrive at a predetermined result.
This also affects treatment guidelines for therapy. Again there is a concern that recommendations are based on biased data and conflicts of interest in the guideline-reviewing panels. This would also be influenced by review panels enlisted by the government to make recommendations based on the “science” and economics, as opposed to the medical community developing guidelines without the confounders of pharmaceutical pressure or governmental political and economic influences.
For the above reasons, I question and mostly rely on tried and true methods until sufficient experience with a new drug is demonstrated, or a new guideline is recommended and shown to be valid in my practice area.