An Opioid Study So Bad That It Disproves Itself?
https://www.acsh.org/news/2019/01/23/opioid-study-so-bad-it-disproves-itself-13753
Here’s a first. A study that might actually disprove itself. I’ve never seen anything like it.
A paper in JAMA Open Network tries to hop on the anti-opioid bandwagon but fails so badly that I had to stare at the screen in disbelief for a while. Did I really just see this? Does it mean what I think it does? Did the authors fail to realize what their own data say?
Here’s the title:
The intent of the study is obvious – to let us know that more pharmaceutical money leads to more opioid prescriptions being written, which results in more OD deaths. While this may be “intuitively obvious,” this does not make it correct. Here’s why.
The authors, mainly from Boston Medical Center, gathered prescription data from 67,507 US physicians in 2,208 counties between August 1, 2013, and December 31, 2015. They used these data to assert (Cue to “Same Old Song,” Four Tops, 1966) that the more that drug companies push opioid pills to doctors the more people died over a 2+ year period. But they may have given us cause to reach an entirely different conclusion.
Let’s start with their Table 2, which examines the association between pharma money and OD death using three different models, each of them representing a different way of measuring “money.”
Table 2 (partial): Source: JAMA Network
There are three ways that the scientists used to measure pharma money: marketing dollars (A), the number of physician payments (B), and the number of physicians who received payments (C). In each model, there is an associated relative risk (RR) of increased deaths in those counties ranging from 1.09-1.18, which means a 9-18% increase.
ACSH advisor and expert biostatistician Dr. Stan Young is uncharacteristically understated:
“An odds ratio, OR, of 1.000 is even odds, no effect. If an OR is close to 1.000, then any small bias could have produced the effect. An OR of 1.1 is not impressive.”
Dr. Stan Young, private communication, 1/23/19
In other words, when the increased relative risk is so low the presence of any kind of bias, for example, age, race, socioeconomic status, or the presence of other drugs, could turn the very low observed increase could turn into a zero increase. Even if we assume a perfect selection process, we are looking at an increase in deaths of about 15% at best. In other words, not much.
Now let’s look at Table 3, which shows that more pharma money results in doctors writing more prescriptions – something that can’t be a huge surprise.
Table 3 (partial): Source: JAMA Network
But now we see that pharma money results in a large increase in the number of prescriptions written by doctors. With a higher relative risk (1.8-13.6-fold, 80-1260 % increase) the chance of bias affecting the results is quite low.
So, let’s put these two conclusions together:
A. More pharma money leads to a very small (perhaps, zero) increase in overdose deaths.
B. More pharma money leads to a significant increase in written prescriptions.
So, it is reasonable to conclude that:
C. Despite a whole lot more written prescriptions, the rise in OD deaths is minimal, if any.
So, it’s also reasonable to conclude that:
D. Prescribed opioids aren’t causing many (or any) deaths, something that patient advocates have been screaming forever.
There are other limitations of the study that are disclosed in the paper as required. It would be rather easy to debunk the study based on these alone. But let’s not. Instead, let’s ask a question: Did the authors start out trying make a point only to end up making the opposite point instead? If so, do they realize this? Or are they just hoping that we don’t?
I have no idea. Perhaps someone can explain? Crazy.
Filed under: General Problems
When I first saw the headline, I immediately thought of the atrocious Krebs study –another study done by anti-opioid bigots which ended up proving nothing other than a group of people could be given opioids by people with a strong anti-opioid bias & still end up with no addiction, dose escalation, or any other problems.
Of course, this fact did not prevent headlines all over the country screaming “OTC meds as effective as opioids” & other completely false garbage. And that flawed study that proved nothing has been used as part of the anti-opioid narrative & as ‘support’ for ever-more draconian legislation against prescribed pain meds. This merely further proves the fact that the anti-opioid zealots don’t need or even want facts on their side; I’ll wager that the study referred to in this story will be twisted & lied about to “prove” whatever the zealots decide they want it to prove. These people are completely uninterested in data or evidence: they believe what they believe because they believe it, and so it is right.
Since when did kolodny and/or prop ever need proven facts! They have found a strong foot hold by using peoples emotions. Mainly grieving parents that want answers to why their child is dead. As a parent myself, I have great sympathy & as parents, we always ask ourselves where did I/WE go wrong? Kolodny sees this as a big opportunity to move in and reassure them that they nor their children are to blame, that it is big bad pharma w/ evil pills that targeted their children.
So it makes it very easy to mislead them w/badly done studies, graphs,charts, etc…
A perfect example of this is his recent “study” that “proves” forced tapering or cutting off opioids do not increase suicide risk at all; when in reality it shows no such thing! How does he get away w/it, I mean people can just read them and see it is BS, right? Wrong! It is not so much that people don’t understand them,(although that is part of it for many people) it’s more simple than that. It all goes back to emotion and that people WANT to believe them and that it helps to alleviate guilt & personal responsibility!
It also personally helps kolodny, whom had a very high failure rate at his rehabs! So when he failed to save their child, he too can pass the buck! This is why we must continue to expose him w/ real facts not based on emotion; but science. We must also stop the war between cpps & those that suffer addiction because kolodny wants us fighting each other because he knows that if we come together, he will NOT be able to keep up this totally created facade!
To my fellow cpps, I know that you are angry & addicts are an easy target; but they are nomore to blame than we are! We both suffer very complex, hard to treat, and very stigmatized MEDICAL conditions. Right now Kolodny is convincing people to sacrifice 1 life for another as the only & right solution; but we know the truth that it is really all just to further his horrific, selfish, & greedy agenda! However it is ONLY with the TRUTH that we can save BOTH lives!!