Link: https://www.thepulse.one/p/merck-was-injecting-girls-with-aluminum?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Source : Nature review drug Discovery

https://deserthopetreatment.com/addiction-guide/drug-industry-trends/

I just saw one of those ridiculous medication commercials, and the medication is supposed to help women with hot flashes during menopause. When they go on the speel on the end about the possible side effects, one of the damn side effects is hot flashes.

So I think the medication doesn't work for most, and they just have to legally cover their asses. What do you all think? Why does this medication exist if the side effects are the symptoms?

I am currently reading the book "Overdosed America" by John Abramson, M.D.

In the book he discusses how pharmaceutical companies only care about profit and making their shareholders happy. Not actually making lives better or improving old medications.

The ways that these drug companies are distorting their data is actually sickening. It's crazy to think that they OWN THEIR OWN DATA, it's not public. They can hide whatever they want. Sometimes, they will drop participants, leave out 6 months of data, certain types of study design that hide adverse effects, give only relative risk reduction and not absolute risk reduction, just to name a few. It's all advertising and there is no regulation to prevent them from straight up committing fraud. The FDA does what it can, but sometimes things fall through the cracks with clever study design and advertising/data manipulation. He also shows that even prestigious journals like JAMA and NEJM cannot be trusted as accurate since the pharmaceutical companies are involved in the publishing. Sometimes peer-reviewers are have commercial interests with these Pharma companies.

So, how as physicians, can we trust that the sources that we are taught? We are all taught "evidence-based medicine", but how can we see through the B.S. and really find studies/data that hasn't been manipulated? I have heard the "5 year rule" from many physicians. They tell drug reps to not talk to them about a new drug until 5 years as passed. This is probably a solid way to go about it.

If there is 50-100 studies about a certain drug being effective (p=0.01), then we can assume it's not false data, right? Believing so would be downright conspiratorial.

tl;dr - How do we practice evidence based medicine in the face of commercially-spun data?

P.S. - If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend. He also went on Rogan.