[Football] Matt Le Tissier

[Commander]

I would not neccessarily say I trust 'global conglomerates', but I do have a lot of trust for the regulatory bodies (MHRA, EMA, FDA, PDMA) to scrutinise and regulate them. I'm just saying how I see it.

As an aside, yesterday you said 'I also work closely with Big Pharma in my job, and I am regularly surprised at some of the stuff that goes on in clinical trials.' - what have you heard? I am curious.

I guess what surprises me is how low I think the bar is set on what constitutes a drug being fit for market release. In my world I would expect any new drug to be absolutely clearly and substantially better, more effective and safer than an existing one on the market, but that doesn't really seem to be the case in practice. I was also genuinely surprised to learn that companies can add a bit of sugar coating or caffeine into the coating of a tablet and then sell it at 10 x the price of a tablet that is exactly the same drug and exactly the same dosage. I just don't see how marketing should have any place in Healthcare at all.

I was surprised to learn that drug companies have been regularly fined billions of dollars for bribing doctors to prescribe their drugs, and nobody seems to care. But most of all I am regularly surprised at some of the utter incompetence of the people working on clinical trials, and how often I hear of people being told to do unethical and even illegal things to help CRO's win / not lose clinical studies. I've heard it so many times.

I guess it's complete naivety on my part, but before I went into this game I just kind of assumed that Healthcare was an area that was trustworthy and not to be questioned. Which is a pretty ridiculous viewpoint on a market that makes billions of dollars from it's customers being, and staying unhealthy.

 

[Commander]

Allow me a little artistic license.

When I was much younger I went through a yellow light in Richmond (London, nor VA). A couple of young coppers pulled me over.

"You just went through an amber light. Do you know what an amber light means?"

"Yes officer. It means prepare to stop".

"No, sir. It means stop. The same as a red light.....................
..........so you just went through a red light".

And on that basis, not only are you a Trump supporter but an agent of the Lizards. Fact.

I'll take the Lizard Agent bit but not the Trump part. Let's agree on that.

 

[dsr-burnley]

'Hoped'. It's a f***ing clinical trial!! There shouldn't be any 'hope' involved whatsoever!

People like Joe Biden came out and said the vaccine would stop you getting infected with the virus and stop it spreading- did the Pharma companies come out and correct him?

This vaccine saves lives because it does its job as a vaccine and prevents (or reduces) serious illness.

There is no reason to hold back from distributing it because you don't know whether it will have a secondary function of reducing transmission. If it does, yippee, if it doesn't, it's a shame, but either way it's doing its primary job.

 

[Iggle Piggle]

Matt Le Tissier fact of the day. He played for Southampton from 1986 to 2002 but only got POTS 3 times. People to beat him included a 35 year old Jimmy case, Derek Statham, Chris Marsden and Dean Richards.

Probably explains why he is into conspiracy.

 

[JBizzle]

Here's 5 minutes of your life you will never get back. This is a truly shocking piece of music on many levels.

Crikey, what a terrible dirge that is

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I guess what surprises me is how low I think the bar is set on what constitutes a drug being fit for market release. In my world I would expect any new drug to be absolutely clearly and substantially better, more effective and safer than an existing one on the market, but that doesn't really seem to be the case in practice. I was also genuinely surprised to learn that companies can add a bit of sugar coating or caffeine into the coating of a tablet and then sell it at 10 x the price of a tablet that is exactly the same drug and exactly the same dosage. I just don't see how marketing should have any place in Healthcare at all.

I was surprised to learn that drug companies have been regularly fined billions of dollars for bribing doctors to prescribe their drugs, and nobody seems to care. But most of all I am regularly surprised at some of the utter incompetence of the people working on clinical trials, and how often I hear of people being told to do unethical and even illegal things to help CRO's win / not lose clinical studies. I've heard it so many times.

I guess it's complete naivety on my part, but before I went into this game I just kind of assumed that Healthcare was an area that was trustworthy and not to be questioned. Which is a pretty ridiculous viewpoint on a market that makes billions of dollars from it's customers being, and staying unhealthy.

New drugs do not neccessarily have to be safer and more efiicatious. It might be the case that a drug has exactly the same profile as another BUT it uses a different mechanism and is merely an alternative treatment to the patient population. As far as I know, and broadly speaking, the only criteria is 'of benefit'. That said, what constitutes 'benefit' can be quite different across disease areas and the current drug landscape will usually be considered in an approval.

By sugar and caffeine I presume you mean formulation? Formulation and route of drugs can indeed change over time e.g. a drug might initially be licenses and given 3 times a day but then a single tablet slow release version is later shown to be equivalent..same drug, same dosage but more manageable for doctor and patient i.e. of benefit. As for 10 times the price, the price is agreed via a disbursement with national drug agencies. A case will be made and a price agreed. 10 x seems fanciful though.

I agree about the second paragraph. There has been a lot of dodgy practices with sales, marketing, generics etc. Most of the large companies have now cleaned up their act though, after huge fines and negative exposure.

I really would be interested in some examples of what a CRO is being asked to do which is illegal. I work quite closely with a number of CROs both large and small via one of my clients, and also work for a CRO myself. I'm not saying it does not happen...just that I have not witnessed it.

The main thrust of my earlier responses is the idea that data and results are routinely falsified....this I really do not believe happens for the reasons I gave.

 

[Weststander]

I have never taken notice of medical advice from people like presidents, people like prime ministers, or even people like CEOs of pharmaceutical companies. They are not people like physicians. I take much of what is said by even people like ministers of health with a pinch of salt, if they are mot expert physicians. Incidentally, do you know who Robin Walker and Will Quince are? I had honestly never heard of them till I looked them up a minute ago.

With Covid, there was sufficient sound coming from the real medical world, echoed in its usual distorting but nevertheless interpretable way by news media, to see we had a pandemic. As someone with a modicum of medical education (I took and passed with distinction (>80%) all the national boards exams for pharmacology, in the medical student class, as part of my 4 year PhD, in Canada, among other things) even I got confused about what a vaccine does, till reminded (ironically by someone on NSC) that the vaccine simply boosts immunity. The reason I thought it prevented the disease was because of the effect of smallpox vaccine (which eradicated the disease). Never mind. This does not make vaccination optional let alone bad.

With all that in mind, I have no urge whatsoever to point my finger at Joe Biden and accuse him of ruining all my hopes and dweams.

And I would certainly not conclude that if only we had had Trump in charge, we in the UK would of been far better able to kill the virus and get on with making Britain great.

Genuine LOL here, on repeat

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I was surprised to learn that drug companies have been regularly fined billions of dollars for bribing doctors to prescribe their drugs, and nobody seems to care. But most of all I am regularly surprised at some of the utter incompetence of the people working on clinical trials, and how often I hear of people being told to do unethical and even illegal things to help CRO's win / not lose clinical studies. I've heard it so many times.

I blame the recruiters

 

[Commander]

I blame the recruiters

Yeah so do the CRO's!

 

[Flagship]

Aha, an opportunity to pose one of my favourite football trivia questions. Who is the only goalkeeper to have saved a Le Tiss penalty?

Was it John Burridge.

 

[Flagship]

He enjoyed being the big fish in that small pond of Southampton, turned down several offers from bigger clubs.

This was because his family were from the Channel Islands and he could get there easily from Southampton.

Brilliant player.

 

[Seagull27]

'Hoped'. It's a f***ing clinical trial!! There shouldn't be any 'hope' involved whatsoever!

People like Joe Biden came out and said the vaccine would stop you getting infected with the virus and stop it spreading- did the Pharma companies come out and correct him?

I might be remembering incorrectly, but wasn't it the case that the vaccine was proven to reduce transmission against the Alpha variant that it was designed against? But then Delta and Omicron came along and the vaccine was no longer effective in this regard (but still drastically reduced the chance of serious illness)?

 

[The Mole]

Was it John Burridge.

No it was Mark Crossley - in 1993 if my memory serves me correctly

 

[southstandandy]

Apparently he's having problems in his personal life and with major mental health issues, which might suggest why he's gone all David Icke.

Hope he gets the treatment he needs.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

New drugs do not neccessarily have to be safer and more efiicatious. It might be the case that a drug has exactly the same profile as another BUT it uses a different mechanism and is merely an alternative treatment to the patient population. As far as I know, and broadly speaking, the only criteria is 'of benefit'. That said, what constitutes 'benefit' can be quite different across disease areas and the current drug landscape will usually be considered in an approval.

By sugar and caffeine I presume you mean formulation? Formulation and route of drugs can indeed change over time e.g. a drug might initially be licenses and given 3 times a day but then a single tablet slow release version is later shown to be equivalent..same drug, same dosage but more manageable for doctor and patient i.e. of benefit. As for 10 times the price, the price is agreed via a disbursement with national drug agencies. A case will be made and a price agreed. 10 x seems fanciful though.

I agree about the second paragraph. There has been a lot of dodgy practices with sales, marketing, generics etc. Most of the large companies have now cleaned up their act though, after huge fines and negative exposure.

I really would be interested in some examples of what a CRO is being asked to do which is illegal. I work quite closely with a number of CROs both large and small via one of my clients, and also work for a CRO myself. I'm not saying it does not happen...just that I have not witnessed it.

The main thrust of my earlier responses is the idea that data and results are routinely falsified....this I really do not believe happens for the reasons I gave.

In the melee I missed the chat between you and @Commander. Two lifetime pals of mine have taken drugs to clinical trial. There are some spaces where error can come into play but a randomized double-blinded clinical trial is a powerful tool.

Approvals famously have always been from 'as good as current meds' in the UK and Europe, but 'must be better than' current drugs in the US. The reason is the mercury in tuna scandal (early 20th C) which spawned the FDA.

It was this (Thalidomide was not approved for pregnant women) that saved America from Thalidomide. By the same token verapamil took more than 10 years longer for US approval. That said, verapamil isn't all that special.

Another pal of mine provided all the preclinical (animal) data that triggered a clinical trial. The trial failed because the drug was given too late in the disease cycle (too long after the heart attack).

False positives, clinically, often occur in the first small scale study (with tens to hundreds of patients) owing to naïve hospital staff (the workers rather than the study owners) gaming the study by selecting who gets the active drug, breaking the coding in doing so. A colleague of mine did a study on a womens' health condition where the small scale part was positive, then the larger study, which had more rigorous patient selection and management, failed. This is very common.

I have done dose finding studies in an animal disease model and found that the drug always 'works' owing to my subconscious bias. When I set the randomized blinded study (and this level of rigour is uncommon in animal model studies) the drug often does not work, and half my publications show that drugs/mechanisms are not useful. I don't get cited well, but maintain my work is more useful (and trustworthy) than much of the preclinical literature.

It is possible to get approvals to test in humans meds (especially biologics) that have had little or no animal testing, if the disease is rapidly lethal and there are few competitor meds. In amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), there are no useful meds and there was a fanfare recently when a new med was introduced. Read the small print and they expect some benefit in as many as 2% of patients. That is in effect no different from no benefit. So this is a triumph of spin over substance. Need-driven hype readily embraced by the medical news media.

The big problem is the US, where medicine is entirely a commercial activity, drugs can be advertised on TV and marketing absolutely determines the success of a drug. Medics need to be persuaded what drug to use. Medicine is conservative so it is hard to break in a new drug. Once a drug is approved it then must be marketed or nobody will use it. It is slightly better in the UK but medics here are just as conservative, and reps just as annoying.

Oh and some companies become unscrupulous when they have dropped a bollock (Vioxx) but by and large they buttock-clenchingly do it by the book. The pharma word is highly regulated.

The patent world is different. Getting a patent granted can be done with little of no data. I am part of a group with a worldwide patent on a new drug. It has cost around £50K in legal fees. We have mountains of good data, fortunately. But because our drug is novel and 'counterintuitive' it has not triggered any interest (or patent challenge). Ironically it could be millions times more useful than the latest ALS bollocks, albeit for a different life-threatening condition.

Anyway....if it were all straightforward and easy we'd have cures for everything. Going forward, quality of life as we age will become pivotal. I'm only 65 but getting creaky (knee, hip, mental health) and hope I won't suddenly give up (my season ticket) and get on the long slow blob-slide to the welcoming embrace of death, anytime soon.

 

[Horses Arse]

Haha maybe.

But I've never said vaccines as a concept are evil or dangerous, they've saved literally millions of lives. But I don't see how questioning a company who made £27 BILLION out of the Covid vaccines, and was recently fined $2.3 BILLION for mis-promoting drugs and literally bribing Drs means I have gone nuts.

I find it completely insane how a whole industry grew out of sugar companies bribing scientists to say that saturated fat is what causes obesity and high cholesterol, and that this is still peddled by the NHS and results in vastly over-prescribed drugs like Statins, making more and more profit for Big Pharma, based on a lie and corruption in the first place.

I find it really odd that so many Left-leaning people happily trust huge global conglomerates that have been proven to have lied, manipulated data and profiteered for the sake of their health. Especially when they are so quick to denounce the likes of Amazon / Apple etc. It doesn't make much sense.

As for taking my income from them, well yes, I've always been a preposterous hypocrite anyway. I'm OK with that. As for the Covid vaccines, I've had three jabs and I've Covid three times, and I sure as hell am not taking another one.

Eh? What has a claim that saturated fats causes high cholesterol got to do with the use of statins?

They prescribe statins for high cholesterol, not saturated fat eating.

Re vaccines, the biggest test is the mass use over the last two years, which conclusively proves there was not the hidden risk that the conspiracy theorists were claiming. Yet still they bang on and on.

 

[Questions]

In the melee I missed the chat between you and @Commander. Two lifetime pals of mine have taken drugs to clinical trial. There are some spaces where error can come into play but a randomized double-blinded clinical trial is a powerful tool.

Approvals famously have always been from 'as good as current meds' in the UK and Europe, but 'must be better than' current drugs in the US. The reason is the mercury in tuna scandal (early 20h C) which spawned the FDA.

It was this (Thalidomide was not approved for pregnant women) that saved America from Thalidomide. By the same token verapamil took more than 10 years longer for US approval. That said, verapamil isn't all that special.

Another pal of mine provided all the preclinical (animal) data that triggered a clinical trial. The trial failed because the drug was given too larte in the disease cycle (too long after the heart attack).

False positives, clinically, often occur in the first small scale study (with tens to hundreds of patients) owing to naïve hospital staff (the workers rather than the study owners) gaming the study by selecting who gets the active drug, breaking the coding in doing so. A colleague of mine did a study on a womens' health condition where the small scale part was positive, then the larger study, which had more rigorous patient selection and management, failed. This is very common.

I have done dose finding studies in an animal disease model and found that the drug always 'works' owing to my subconscious bias. When I set the randomized blinded study (and this level of rigour is uncommon in animal model studies) the drug often does not work, and half my publications show that drugs/mechanisms are not useful. I don't get cited well, but maintain my work is more useful (and trustworthy) than much of the preclinical literature.

It is possible to get approvals to test in humans meds (especially biologics) that have had little or no animal testing, if the disease is rapidly lethal and there are few competitor meds. In amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), there are no useful meds and there was a fanfare recently when a new med was introduced. Read the small print and they expect some benefit in as many as 2% of patients. That is in effect no different from no benefit. So this is a triumph of spin over substance. Need-driven hype readily embraced by the medical news media.

The big problem is the US, where medicine is entirely a commercial activity, drugs can be advertised on TV and marketing absolutely determines the success of a drug. Medics need to be persuaded what drug to use. Medicine is conservative so it is hard to break in a new drug. Once a drug is approved it then must be marketed or nobody will use it. It is slightly better in the UK but medics here are just as conservative, and reps just as annoying.

Oh and some companies become unscrupulous when they have dropped a bollock (Vioxx) but by and large they buttock-clenchingly do it by the book. The pharma word is highly regulated.

The patent world is different. Getting a patent granted can be done with little of no data. I am part of a group with a worldwide patent on a new drug. It has cost around £50K in legal fees. We have mountains of good data, fortunately. But because our drug is novel and 'counterintuitive' it has not triggered any interest (or patent challenge). Ironically it could be millions times more useful than the latest ALS bollocks, albeit for a different life-threatening condition.

Anyway....if it were all straightforward and easy we'd have cures for everything. Going forward, quality of life as we age will become pivotal. I'm only 65 but getting creaky (knee, hip, mental health) and hope I won't suddenly give up (my season ticket) and get on the long slow blob-slide to the welcoming embrace of death, anytime soon.

That’s easy for you to say….

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

That’s easy for you to say….

Sorry. Apparently it was a 'look at me' post. Never f***ing works. I may have to paint my arse blue and shove a daffodil up my ring piece.

 

[Horses Arse]

So is there a conspiracy or not?
And where does Matt fit in to all this?
And how much is HWT being paid to brainwash us by the reptilian overlords?

Someone please tell me what to think!


I'm going for a lie down.

Critically, what does CMS think about it all? Is he still full on conspiracy? A le tiss apprentice? I'm not on twitter so difficult to keep up with the bile

 

[Baldseagull]

Sorry. Apparently it was a 'look at me' post. Never f***ing works. I may have to paint my arse blue and shove a daffodil up my ring piece.

I don't think that would be effective in the online world either Harry, still give it a trial, you never know, could be one of those counter intuitive pathways.