the 93% solution

[Guest guest]

There are so many times on this list that we get wrapped up in the "ONE RIGHT CHOICE."New Fill vs BioalcamidAZT vs VireadPIs with Boost, or without.......It's seldom true that between two therapies, one will kill you, and one will cure you.   It's usually a question of 93%  doing well in one arm, vs 98% in another.   If one treatment arm is dramatically better than the other, the trial will stop.ACTG 2095 was a good example, comparing Trizivir to more standard therapies.   The trial was stopped when the rate of Trizivir failure was much greater than that of standard therapy.   That isn't to say that everyone on Trizivir was going to die, but when compared to other therapies, in large numbers of people, it was more failure prone......  93% vs 98%.The more narrow the difference, the longer the trial, and the more subjects you have to have in the trial to show a difference.When one patient does something, and it works, it's great.  You don't know though, ever, if his experience was the luck of being in the 93% that would have done well anyway, or whether what they are doing is part of the 5% better response of the 98%.  Statistically, it's meaningless.That's the role of clinical trials, to try to find, in a world of generally decent treatments, interventions that give you just that bit more you need to keep going, and in good health.Again, when you jump of the Empire State Building, it's how you feel at the end of the day that matters, not how things were at the 57th floor....... Barrowpozbod@...