For an industry that has a lot to hide, this still may come as a surprise. A statistic called Numbers Needed to Treat (NNT) was devised to figure out how many people have to be treated with a drug to avoid one incidence of a medical issue (such as a heart attack). If a cancer drug has an NNT of 100, that means only 1 person avoided having cancer for every 100 people who were given the drug. Sounds bizarre, doesn’t it, that we have drugs allowed on the market by the FDA with NNT numbers higher than 250?! 

Mercola.com posted a very informative article on this recently.  In it they cite a Business Week study done on Lipitor specifically attempting to decipher what an NNT of 250 means for that drug.  Referring to an ad by Lipitor’s manufacturer, Pfizer, the article said:

Upon first glance, the ad boasts that Lipitor reduces heart attacks by 36 percent. But there is an asterisk. And when you follow the asterisk, you find the following in much smaller type:

“That means in a large clinical study, 3% of patients taking a sugar pill or placebo had a heart attack compared to 2% of patients taking Lipitor.”

What this means is that for every 100 people who took the drug over 3.3 years, three people on placebos, and two people on Lipitor, had heart attacks. That means that taking Lipitor resulted in just one fewer heart attack per 100 people.
 

So, just to be clear, Pfizer is saying that if you give 100 people at risk of heart attack a sugar pill for more than 3 years, 3 of them would have a heart attack.  Give 100 others at risk of heart attack Lipitor for the same time period and 2 of them would have a heart attack.  So 99 of 100 have spent a lot of money and risked a lot of unpleasant side effects – for nothing!  That’s not just a dirty secret; that’s a dirty rotten shame.

This is one more reason why I strive to find solutions that avoid the use of drugs and are more effective.

I welcome your comments!