Posted by bleauberry on March 4, 2008, at 17:15:02
In reply to AD's no better than placebo research, posted by Giorgio on March 1, 2008, at 16:27:02
To me the absolute best research places to see how ADs work or not is right in people's own homes. Real people experiences written in their own words. These can be seen at various places, the most popular two I can think of are askapatient.com and revolutionhealth.com. People rate their meds on a scale of 1 to 5 and also have ample opportunity to comment on effectiveness, side effects, how long on it, etc etc.
In the real world it is quite obvious there are people who get astounding benefit from ADs. It is also obvious there are others that just get more problems from them. And there are others in the middle ground.
I am not interested in taking a placebo and I could care less whether someone mysteriously gets well on one. So the placebo arm of studies is totally meaningless to me. If 30% of people got well on placebo, and 30% got well on the AD, well, that means 30% of the people on the AD got better regardless of the placebo. Had those 30% on AD gotten a placebo instead, they probably would have never made it as high a 30%. The other 30% on placebo probably didn't need an AD, and the placebo arm of the study served as a good tool to identify who they were versus the others who really did need something.
In any case, websites that allow real people to rate and comment on their own meds give the best true life evidence of whether a drug works or not, and if so, how often, and how it compares to other drugs. It isn't scientific, but it is real. I like real. One drawback I've seen is that some people tend to comment on a drug only after they've been on it a few days or a couple weeks. So I don't give those much weight. I am more interested in the ones that people have been using for months or years, and especially the ones where they tried 3 or 4 other ADs to get to the success where they are now.
I guess whether it is the real world or a manipulated fake statistical clinical world, the same thing holds true...yes ADs work, but mileage varies, you gotta try different stuff.
poster:bleauberry
thread:815587
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080303/msgs/816194.html