Should We Assume Clinical Trials Conducted By The Medical Industry Provide Accurate Information To

I guess I’d like to direct I said dr. Williams um I am a conference organizer I have no backgrounds at all I don’t do research and so I’ve really no knowledge of this but I have come to the conclusion or I’m a very distrustful of industries whether we’re talking about the soda industry the candy industry the beer industry the fossil fuel industry I feel like they’re trying to sell me and they’ll say whatever they have to do to make the sale I sort of feel the same exact way about the pharmaceutical industry so when they say we have a new drug and it works I kind of feel I read Ben Goldacre book called bad Pharma and they convinced me that every clinical trial not every clinical trials that there’s so many opportunities for these for the pharmaceutical industry to have a way to influence it to somehow influence or to stop studies or delete studies and the end result that when the doctors get these studies their studies that was so influenced and affected by the pharmaceutical industry that even if a doctor says look we have three great studies maybe there were five that they kicked out and never showed so I kind of feel like how do I really believe any doctor or anyone or any doctor who says look we have the studies if the study is themselves I don’t trust so I kind of feel like I don’t know if even if you say that the statin studies show that statins work I’m thinking who ran those studies who controlled them who influenced them so do you I mean how do we decide whether I should listen when a doctor or a smart person says the studies show that some drug is good or statins are good that really has been a concern and there are a lot of financial motivations it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about the device industry or or the food industry doesn’t really matter and that kind of relationships with industry the influence of industry on scientific literature has been deep it’s been there for a long time but there’s no question that we have progressed and so how do but let me ask you before I give you the overall answer let me answer that one particular question how do you know that statins work because breaking the Medicare trust fund people are not well and they’re not dead and that if you’re the insurer is putting you in deep trouble okay so there’s no question that statins saved lives but it’s not stopping it’s stopping progression of disease but it’s not curing people so they’re still seeking health care now one of the things that I mentioned earlier was clinical trials.gov that really is important because there have been instances I’ll try really hard not to say the name of the drug where a major trial everyone knew it with the trial was going on the trial ended and then there was no results and no one was talking about it so back if this was over ten years ago I was sort of the incoming co-chair of the annual scientific sessions in art somebody on our committee said why don’t we tell that company that they have to present it at our meeting well we contacted them they did and yeah it was a huge negative for their particular drug and but when you call them on a carpet they really did go ahead and publish the results and that led to a change in the direction of how cholesterol drugs were were actually being treated and so physicians was this society’s American Medical Association we can all the Food and Drug Administration we can all hold each other accountable to try to help with the issue of a pharmaceutical industry relationships that would taint the science to some degree now being able to register all the drugs and all the trials I think has helped a lot so we do get negative trials they may not get the biggest publication but at least you know from that website that something was done in this in that particular area so my biggest issue with them is probably not the level of science because if imagine this imagine you’re a drug company and you put out a drug that doesn’t work or it’s toxic and you’ve somehow you know gotten in front of the FDA and you’ve gotten it through on data that’s fake there is a big truth that’s about to happen and as your truck will be released and it will be prescribed and then you will have in my career there’s a handful of drugs cerebus tat and Selleck ran the drugs that had to be withdrawn and those withdrawals are very costly your shareholders your CEOs all of them are quite upset because it’s gonna cost that company a lot of money so you have a big the fact that the drug is going to be widely distributed it’s gonna tell you that’ll hold people accountable because the the company will be sued for having you know the you know you see them on television this is one of the most litigious societies ever if not the most you see them on television all the time did you bleed on this particular drug well it doesn’t matter that that drug is half the bleeding of what we used to use you’re still going to get sued even though it’s better the the mesh fur I see that one all the time the mesh for hernia repair anytime there’s a recall there’s going to be a lawsuit and so that unfortunately hosts people and companies accountable as well so if I have a problem with the pharmaceutical industry it really isn’t the accuracy of the trials because they will be held accountable ultimately for that it’s the pricing that you know I know that’s a little off topic but I think it’s important because we are talking about trying to maintain our Medicare system and decrease health care costs and pharmaceutical costs are major issue and if you look around the planet there are only two countries last time I look that don’t have cost constraints to develop countries and that’s the United States in New Zealand New Zealand doesn’t have this kind of an issue they’re very similar to Australia where they do our price controls and I actually personally have talked to the president of Pharma as many years ago and said you know why can’t we bring in these costs and the answer came back that if we rein in the costs we will have to stop research and development and so I said so aren’t if we if so you’re saying that the that in Germany and France they can pay 30 to 50 percent of what we’re paying and the United States population has to bear the cost of R&D for all the drugs in the world and there was a little pause and he said yes I don’t know how to get around that you know how do you make it you know more how do you make it easier to have drug development sometimes it takes 30 years and billions of dollars and then they want to come back with a drug that costs eighty thousand dollars well if you’re you know harvoni and you stop the progression of hepatitis C you cure it instead of people dying maybe that’s worth eighty thousand dollars so these are it’s a difficult area and I know that it’s been a big political issue recently having Medicare be able to negotiate prices of drugs I think is something that many of us physicians would be in favor of for the benefit of patients for compliance with and stopping disease we’re not there yet may I just add one more thing is that I think we’ve just missed something though that’s important and that is we’re here to talk about lifestyle medicine and trying to avoid the use of medicinal substances which don’t get to remove the cause of the problem and that we’re talking about diseases that are caused by what people eat and drugs enable people psychologically to think it’s okay to keep eating the same diet that caused the problem to begin with therefore it accelerates in and promotes the progression of their illness because we never because people think cuz their glucose looks okay they can still be overweight and eat burgers and go to fast food restaurants and drink soda because their blood pressure is okay it’s an okay to eat french fries and potato chips and because they’re high blood pressure is okay if in other words without the drugs that obviously picking you up smashing your head against the wall and saying I want to see you next week dropping five pounds eating this vegetables staying off salt and I’ll see you next week after it’s walking an hour each morning and see if you look better but now we give them a drug and the person goes right out to McDonald’s I have milkshakes and french fries and they think they’re okay [Applause] I couldn’t agree with Joe more it’s just so blatant it’s it’s a hardwood