Treatment Guidelines are dangerous

Already some of my earliest posts exposed the lie implicit in calling antiretroviral drugs “life-saving”:

— “the NIH Fact Sheet reports deaths ‘from liver failure, kidney disease, and cardiovascular complications’ in the first decade of HAART (‘cocktail’) therapy, and the largest study to date (of 22,000 patients) found that the drugs do not decrease mortality — in other words, they don’t save lives” (Best treatment for HIV: This year’s advice, last year’s, or next year’s?).

— The official Treatment Guidelines of the National Institutes of Health change incessantly, are based more on opinion than on scientific evidence, rely on surrogate markers rather than patient health, and are so complex and change so often that physicians must suffer constant dilemmas over how to advise their patients (Antiretroviral drugs: history and rhetoric).

I pointed out that the Guidelines are drawn up by panels of experts of whom almost all have direct conflicts of interest with manufacturers of antiretroviral drugs (Conflicts of interest).
The widespread harm done by the toxicity of antiretroviral treatment practiced according to these Guidelines featured in all too many subsequent posts:

What HIV drugs do;    First: do no harm!;    To avoid HIV later, damage your kidneys and liver now;     Death, antiretroviral drugs, and cognitive dissonance;     HIV/AIDS scam: Have antiretroviral drugs saved 3 million life-years?;     Antiretroviral treatment benefits? from 3 million to 1.2 million to …!?!;    Nevirapine, TB, and HIV/AIDS;    Nevirapine — P.S.;    HAART saves lives — but doesn’t prolong them!?;    “AIDS” deaths: owing to antiretroviral drugs or to lack of antiretroviral treatment?;    HAART and HIV/AIDS: Dilemmas, Paradoxes, and Errors;    Poison in South Africa;     State of HIV/AIDS Denial: Carcinogenic HAART;    Living with HIV; Dying from What?;     Prophylaxis via organ failure and bankruptcy;    Tenofovir and the ethics of clinical trials;    HAART? You’ve got to be crazy . . . ;    How antiretroviral drugs are approved;     Drug peddlers’ ads ignore FDA;     The Lazarus effect in HIV/AIDS;    HAART kills hearts;    HAART makes things worse: Elsevier journal publishes HIV/AIDS heresies;    Kidney-disease denialism (a special case of HAART denialism);    HAART denialism, contd.;    HAART causes strokes;    Hidden in plain sight: The damage done by antiretroviral drugs;    HAART is toxic: Mainstream concedes it, in backhanded ways;    Spinning Truvada;    Antiretroviral drugs lead to normal life?;    Killing a baby;    Breaking News: Baby Rico rushed to ER, Taken Off Medication

 

I’ve become increasingly aware that what has gone wrong in the science and practice of HIV/AIDS reflects what has gone wrong in the wider spheres of medical science and practice and indeed of science in general. The present post was stimulated by Jeanne Lenzer’s article in the British Medical Journal, “Why we can’t trust clinical guidelines”.

As I point out about that important piece on my other blog (Why NOT to “Ask your doctor”), the damage done by drug-based medical practice has been described in devastating fashion by Ben Goldacre in Bad Pharma, and corruption of science by outside interests is delineated in my Dogmatism  in Science and Medicine: How Dominant Theories Monopolize Research and Stifle the Search for Truth.