Sauniere
02-13-2006, 09:31 PM
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_08/b3972070.htm
Whoa this is interesting stuff on all those medical reports we keep hearing about that lead to the next diet fad or therapy...
-snip-
Here comes another wild ride on the roller coaster of health advice. For years we have been told that eating less fat and munching on more fruits and veggies can work magic, preventing everything from heart disease to cancer. Now a study of 48,835 women, part of the Women's Health Initiative, says that such "healthier"diets bring no benefits.
The study was published by the respected Journal of the American Medical Assn. (JAMA). But before you rush out for fast food, ask a few simple questions. What did the study actually examine? Do its data support such a sweeping conclusion? We often overreact to studies that are more limited and uncertain than we realize. One startling fact: Fully one-third of all dramatic new findings simply don't hold up in later studies. Remember hormone replacement therapy? Once presumed to cut heart disease risk, it was later found to be dangerous -- and now doctors are questioning those supposed risks.
Among other things, the new diet report shows how research dollars can be won for questionable studies. In the early 1990s, when the study was proposed, prominent researchers such as Harvard's Dr. Walter Willett argued that it wasn't worth doing. Reviewers at the National Institutes of Health turned it down for funding. But Dr. Bernadine Healy, appointed as NIH director in 1991, lobbied relentlessly for support for the suite of studies that make up the Women's Health Initiative. "It was an end-run through Congress that got it approved," Willett recalls...
Whoa this is interesting stuff on all those medical reports we keep hearing about that lead to the next diet fad or therapy...
-snip-
Here comes another wild ride on the roller coaster of health advice. For years we have been told that eating less fat and munching on more fruits and veggies can work magic, preventing everything from heart disease to cancer. Now a study of 48,835 women, part of the Women's Health Initiative, says that such "healthier"diets bring no benefits.
The study was published by the respected Journal of the American Medical Assn. (JAMA). But before you rush out for fast food, ask a few simple questions. What did the study actually examine? Do its data support such a sweeping conclusion? We often overreact to studies that are more limited and uncertain than we realize. One startling fact: Fully one-third of all dramatic new findings simply don't hold up in later studies. Remember hormone replacement therapy? Once presumed to cut heart disease risk, it was later found to be dangerous -- and now doctors are questioning those supposed risks.
Among other things, the new diet report shows how research dollars can be won for questionable studies. In the early 1990s, when the study was proposed, prominent researchers such as Harvard's Dr. Walter Willett argued that it wasn't worth doing. Reviewers at the National Institutes of Health turned it down for funding. But Dr. Bernadine Healy, appointed as NIH director in 1991, lobbied relentlessly for support for the suite of studies that make up the Women's Health Initiative. "It was an end-run through Congress that got it approved," Willett recalls...