Reply #19: I'm not sure what your thought experiment is meant to counter. [View All]

[Jim__]

My post had 2 main points taken from the review:

1. Under certain conditions, double-blind tests may break down. Patients and doctors, based on their own statements, know who is taking the treatment drug. This is a violation of the basic assumption of a double-blind test, and, as such, can invalidate the entire test.
   
2. The scientific literature on pharmaceuticals is biased. This is a serious concern because it indicates that when doctors turn to the literature for information, all that can be found is, effectively, corporate advertising.
   

As to what you are saying about treatment, my reading of the review is that a large part of the problem is that the emphasis is not on identifying actual causes and treatments of disease, but on marketing pharmaceuticals. It's more about the system than about individual doctors.