Where good news and bad news show up
In the middle of last year, the Herald had a story in the Health & Wellbeing section about solanezumab, a drug candidate for Alzheimer’s disease. The lead was
The first drug that slows down Alzheimer’s disease could be available within three years after trials showed it prevented mental decline by a third.
Even at the time, that was an unrealistically hopeful summary. The actual news was that solanezumab had just failed in a clinical trial, and its manufacturers, Eli Lilly, were going to try again, in milder disease cases, rather than giving up.
That didn’t work, either. The story is in the Herald, but now in the Business section. The (UK) Telegraph, where the Herald’s good-news story came from, hasn’t yet mentioned the bad news.
If you read the health sections of the media you’d get the impression that cures for lots of diseases are just around the corner. You shouldn’t have to read the business news to find out that’s not true.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »