The ‘relative risk ratio’: it drives the sale of new drugs – where a large part of Big Pharma’s profits are made – and gives the mass media their content. She makes it seem like we’re all preoccupied with being brilliant and pushing the boundaries of disease, when in reality that’s not the case. For example, a news item: ‘New drug X reduces high blood pressure by 30%’. When people read that a drug is 30% effective, they assume that the drug improves a condition by 30%. But that’s not true. It is the illusion of the magician, whose magic trick is achieved through the use of ‘relative risk’.
Suppose you are 40 years old, do not smoke, drink moderately and you cycle at the weekend. Your risk of developing high blood pressure (hypertension) is then approximately 10% higher than that of a peer who is fitter and therefore has a lower risk profile. If you were to take new drug In other words, the drug reduces your risk of hypertension by 3%. So, 30% is relative to a person’s actual risk, or “absolute risk,” as statisticians like to call it.
A recent study makes this clear. Newspaper headlines reporting on the study said that women who used a progestin-only contraceptive, such as the pill or an IUD, were 25% more likely to develop breast cancer. Again, it’s true, but that’s the relative risk a woman faces. A woman in her late 20s has an absolute risk of breast cancer of only 0.5% and if she takes the pill that risk increases to 0.57%. By her late 30s, her cancer risk is about 2% – still very low – and the pill and IUD increase that to 2.2%.1
Researchers from the University of Oxford monitored the health of about 30,000 women, some of whom were using progestin-only contraceptives. The number of new cases of breast cancer in women who use contraceptives for 15 years increases from 0.084% to 0.092% in total, the researchers concluded, but that did not make the headlines. Instead, reporters used the relative risk figure. Everyone likes relative risk. It gives the media something to report on, it boosts drug company sales, and it gives academics a turn in the spotlight for research that would otherwise be relegated to academic oblivion.
Bryan Hubbard
This article previously appeared in WDDTY Jun 2023.
2023-09-23 11:22:54
#Word #Magicians #Illusion #Medical #File
