Wall Street Journal on Reading Fine Print, Insurers Question Studies of Drugs.

[Guest guest]

This was sent to me.

Does anyone know anything about this? I can't access the full article, you have to have access to the WSJ.

Nelly

Full article at:http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112484377094821351,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_oneGood article in today's Wall Street Journal on "Reading Fine Print,Insurers Question Studies of Drugs." The article identifies a highlyspecialized evaluation niche, what they call drug study "detective."Here's an excerpt:As the cost of drugs in the U.S. approaches $250 billion a year,pharmaceutical companies are running up against a growing breed of detectivetrained to see through marketing spin. Working for insurers, state Medicaidprograms and nonprofit bodies, these detectives cast a wary eye on publishedstudies in medical journals, once considered an unimpeachable source. Theysearch for subtle aspects of clinical-trial design that might show the drugsare not all they're cracked up to be."You could be duped," says Siri Childs, who oversees pharmacy policy for theWashington state Medicaid program. "We know now that just because it'spublished in a medical journal, that doesn't assure its quality."The Cochrane Collaboration, a nonprofit that analyzes the quality of studiesand collects the ones it considers good into broader analyses, has avolunteer corps of about 7,500 reviewers, mostly doctors and academics.That's up from about 2,800 five years ago. Another player is the DrugEffectiveness Review Project, an effort by an Oregon nonprofit. It issuesreports summarizing all the studies in a particular treatment area and oftencriticizes individual studies for failings such as inadequate controls andhigh dropout rates.