Re: "Statins caused my kidney failure"

From: Herman Rubin (hrubin_at_mean.stat.purdue.edu)
Date: 07/16/04 

Date: 16 Jul 2004 09:36:29 -0500

In article <2YBJc.1571$4L7.568@newssvr33.news.prodigy.com>,
Bill <xxx@yy.zz> wrote:

>"Herman Rubin" <hrubin@odds.stat.purdue.edu> wrote in message
>news:cd6ai8$5poi@odds.stat.purdue.edu...
>> >And again, why can you not accept the fact that statins can help a large
>group
>> >of people.

>> This is true. Better identification is needed, and medical
>> statistical studies ignore FAR too much. That they can help
>> many people does not mean that doctors should push very low
>> guidelines on all.

>I agree with that. There is also an economics issue that comes into play -
>where can the health care dollar be spent better. I would like to see more
>govt. supported large scale trials - perhaps on a multi-country basis - to
>sort out what is best (including dosage) for whom.

You have no idea what is needed to run the studies. There is
a major problem with running high dimensional studies, and we
only have fair ways of attacking them. Medical researchers
try to stick to low dimensional ones by using paired controls,
but these can do so much. This is especially the case if one
treatment can be good for some and bad for others, while other
treatments work differently.

Government people may or may not be competent to run simultaneous
equations trials, or trials with very many variables. We do not
even have what can be called a good methodology for the small
(I am not convinced that 100 million, or a billion, will get us
out of the "small" problem) sample sizes we have. There are those
who know the problems, and can come up with fair to poor ways of
handling the data. The problem is BIG.

Meanwhile, much progress is being done using highly inbred rats,
where the problems are there, but the variability in factors is
not. There are problems in carrying them over. 

-- 
This address is for information only.  I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hrubin@stat.purdue.edu         Phone: (765)494-6054   FAX: (765)494-0558

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