Why Almost Everything You Hear About Medicine Is Wrong - Neden Bir ilaçla İlgili duyduğunuz her şey yanlış

If you follow the news about health research, youriskwhiplash. Firstgarliclowers bad cholesterol, then—after more study—it doesn’t. Hormonereplacementreducethe risk of heart disease inpostmenopausalwomen, until a huge study finds that it doesn’t (and that it raises the risk of breast cancer to boot). Eating a big breakfast cuts your total daily calories, or not—as a studyreleasedlast week finds. Yet even if biomedical research can be afickleguide, werelyon it.

Butwhat ifwrong answers aren’t theexceptionbut the rule? More and more scholars whoscrutinizehealth research are now making that claim. It isn’t just anindividualstudy here and there that’sflawed, theycharge. Instead, the veryframeworkof medical investigation may beoff-kilter, leading time and again to findings that areat bestunprovedandat worstdangerously wrong. The result is a system that leads patients and physiciansastray—spuroftencostlyregimensthat won’t help and may evenharmyou.

It’s adisturbingview, with hugeimplicationfor doctors, policymakers, and health-conscious consumers. And one of itsforemostadvocates, Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis, has just ascended to a new,prominentplatform after years ofcrusadingagainst thebaselesshealth and medical claims. As the new chief of Stanford University’s Prevention Research Center, Ioannidis iscementinghis role as one of medicine’s top mythbusters. “People are being hurt and even dying” because of false medicalclaims, he says: notquackery, but errors in medical research.

This is Ioannidis’s moment. As medical costshamperthe economy andimpededeficit-reductionefforts, policymakers and businesses aredesperateto cut them withoutsacrificingsick people. Oneno-brainersolution is to use and pay for only treatments that work. But if Ioannidis is right, most biomedical studies are wrong.

Of course, not allconventionalhealth wisdom is wrong. Smoking kills, beingmorbidlyobese orseverelyunderweight makes you more likely to die before your time,processedmeat raises the risk of some cancers, and controlling blood pressure reduces the risk of stroke. Theupshotfor consumers: medical wisdom that has stood the test of time—and large,randomized, controlled trials—is more likely to be right than the latest news flash about a single food or drug.

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