Gay All The Time

An interesting study came out detailing that those infected with HIV who stopped taking their medication, for breaks, were more likely to die or suffer serious setbacks than those who maintained their regimen of drugs.

(Washington) One of the largest-ever studies of HIV treatment has found that patients who temporarily stop taking their powerful medicines more than double their risk of dying. (full story)

Rather a scary result if you believe in the study that is. And this is my quandry and I think one we should all examine. There are a ton of studies that come out that tells us this is good for us, bad for us, or such. There are polls that say only 1% of the Internet search results in porn links when looking for something other than porn. Polls that tell us who supports which political candidate or support which measure being introduced in the legislatures. Problem is, how unbiased are those polls and studies?

Now I don’t know, but common sense tells me that yes, it would be a risk to stop taking my drugs for any length of time. It also tells me that at times, one needs a break in order for the drugs to maybe be even more effective. I mean face it, the more you take something the greater the odds your body will develop an immunity to them. So maybe the answer isn’t so much a withdrawal of drugs for a period of time, but rather a change in the combination.

Yet that isnt quite what this study says. It says there is a greater risk of dying and that is scary but then who commissioned the study and who pays for it? And should that be information we need to know? Unfortunately I think it is more and more becoming necessary for us to know this stuff, simply to verify the study results are not skewed.

For example, this study might be skewed.

Fourteen of the researchers on the study have received consulting fees, advisory fees and other types of payments from pharmaceutical companies that make HIV medications, the journal reported. (full story)

Now that in itself isn’t necessarily bad, but it does tend to get the old radar up and wondering just how much of the report is fiction, how much realistic, and was it slanted in any way. In short it tends to lessen the credability of the results. The perception could be that it is tainted and then, if the results are legitimate, well the end result could be deadly.

So what does one do? Show who pays the bills or not? For myself I’d want to know, to make a better informed decision. This is the problem though when science is underwritten by private enterprise. Disclosure could help mitigate that skepticism. If you hide who is paying the bills, and its found out, well I think that would tank any credability totally. Least by having proper disclosure people can make more informed decisions without undue bias.