"Years ago, when I was in university, I was shadowing an orthopedic surgeon. On my first day, I watched him write about 10 or 15 prescriptions for a drug called Vioxx. I had never heard of it, so I asked him "What's Vioxx for? I've never heard of it." He said "It's the new generation of NSAID anti-inflammatory pain-killer medications. It's more effective and much SAFER than the previous generation (aspirin, etc.)."
One year later, it was publicized that Vioxx caused 88,000 Americans to have heart attacks, and nearly 40,000 of them DIED.
I personally witnessed THOUSANDS of people get prescribed this drug, which later went on to get removed from the market, but only YEARS after it had KILLED tens of thousands of people.
No doubt that some of those patients I witnessed get that prescription ended up dying from it.
IMPORTANTLY... The problem wasn't that Vioxx didn't WORK to reduce inflammation and pain. It did "work." It was AMAZINGLY EFFECTIVE at relieving pain and inflammation in the hours after taking it.
The problem was that in the long-term, it ALSO caused enormous harm to other aspects of health and killed a lot of people.
KEY POINT: Depending on HOW you measured the efficacy of Vioxx -- for what metrics and over what period of time -- the studies would either find that it's an "amazing wonder drug" or a "disaster drug that's killing people."
It's important to understand that the difference in these two conclusions about the drug -- wonder drug vs. deadly drug -- is purely in what outcomes are studied, and over what period of time.
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Now...
Just imagine if we judged the efficacy of Vioxx purely based on how well it decreases inflammation within the first days/weeks after taking it, and we had no concern for the need for long-term safety data and long-term outcomes on all measures of health/disease -- which eventually showed that it caused tens of thousands of people to DIE from heart attacks.
Imagine if we only judged Thalidomide based on how well it reduces morning sickness in pregnant women, and had no concern about the long-term safety data -- which eventually showed that it was responsible for thousands of babies to be born without arms or legs.
Imagine if we only judged opioids based on how well they relieve pain after taking it, and had no concern for the long-term safety data -- which eventually showed them to be responsible for over 500,000 deaths.
Just imagine if there were doctors around today that are so quick to brush off the lessons of medical history -- and the obvious NECESSITY of long-term safety data before doing mass medical interventions with novel technologies on the entire population -- that they didn't understand the basic principle that a medical intervention can be highly effective based on ONE MEASURE at one point in time, and yet simultaneously CAUSE far greater harm in the long run.
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Importantly, there are thousands of experts -- including the inventor of mRNA vac-seen technology -- that are warning of exactly that potential right now.
If you understand the lessons of medical history, you realize that it might be worth paying attention to what they have to say.
