why you should interpret all death statistics with skepticism

[Lani]

http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/arti...icleid=1809755

[sarah]

so JAMA has a sense of humor or humour?!

[Lani]

Actually it is not funny. It is causing erroneous results of studies people rely on to choose treatments, drug companies rely on to decide whether or not to continue to develop drugs, the FDA to decide whether a new treatment is better than an old one and insurance companies to decide whether or not to pay for treatments (and perhaps allowing some murders to go undetected as well)

[sarah]

so heart deaths are over reported because they really don't know why they died? very weird. Wouldn't it be more honest to say, he had.......but we don't know what killed him - he just stopped breathing.

[linn65]

Our government makes everything difficult! What do they do in France Sarah??

[Jaimieh]

I used to do Data entry for Pfizer and you would be shocked at what the FDA considers and adverse event (meaning something caused by the medication). I actually got reprimanded at one point because a patients car got landed on by an airplane while they were driving on a freeway and I didn't report the adverse event. How in the heck is that an adverse event I have no idea but it was considered one.

This doesn't surprise me at all.