Strong medicine from Trevor Butterworth of the Huffington Post..
"In one of the most devious pieces of reporting, the New York Times characterized Nissen's critics as "Republicans on Capitol Hill and others." How many New York Times readers just read "Republicans" and automatically dismissed the idea that Nissen's data was impeachable? Shouldn't readers have been told that the "others" consisted of leading medical experts?
If The Problem is Diabetes, Talk to Endocrinologists (At Some Point in the Story)
One of the bizarre aspects of the media coverage of Avandia is the second-tier status given to endocrinologists. Hello! These are the people who are managing the diabetes epidemic, doing the research, and prescribing the drugs; and yet, their voices were subordinated to a handful of critics, none of whom appeared to be involved in the clinical treatment of the disease. It should have given reporters some pause for thought that the doctors who denounced Avandia were not endocrinologists - and that pause should have raised questions such as, if this drug is as useless, as the FDA's associate director for science and medicine in the office of surveillance and epidemiology, David Graham, claims, why has it been so widely prescribed? "
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trevor-butterworth/so-what-did-we-learn-from_b_58597.html
"In one of the most devious pieces of reporting, the New York Times characterized Nissen's critics as "Republicans on Capitol Hill and others." How many New York Times readers just read "Republicans" and automatically dismissed the idea that Nissen's data was impeachable? Shouldn't readers have been told that the "others" consisted of leading medical experts?
If The Problem is Diabetes, Talk to Endocrinologists (At Some Point in the Story)
One of the bizarre aspects of the media coverage of Avandia is the second-tier status given to endocrinologists. Hello! These are the people who are managing the diabetes epidemic, doing the research, and prescribing the drugs; and yet, their voices were subordinated to a handful of critics, none of whom appeared to be involved in the clinical treatment of the disease. It should have given reporters some pause for thought that the doctors who denounced Avandia were not endocrinologists - and that pause should have raised questions such as, if this drug is as useless, as the FDA's associate director for science and medicine in the office of surveillance and epidemiology, David Graham, claims, why has it been so widely prescribed? "
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trevor-butterworth/so-what-did-we-learn-from_b_58597.html
