October is breast cancer awareness month. Women should know there is no reliable evidence that routine mammograms reduce death from breast cancer, and there’s good evidence that they cause harm.
One of the biggest recent controversies in medicine involves the effectiveness of the antiviral drug Tamiflu. Governments have stockpiled the drug but many have raised doubts about its usefulness.
Antiviral drugs are largely ineffective for reducing hospital admissions and complications from influenza, and come with serious side-effects, according to a research review published by the Cochrane Collaboration…
Women who have a midwife as their main carer throughout pregnancy and birth are around 23% less likely to have a premature baby than women whose care is shared between different obstetricians, GPs and…
When they were introduced over 20 years ago, national breast screening programs were a milestone in public health. They were based on evidence from randomised trials that screening saved lives. But there…
If researchers go to the effort of getting funds, recruiting patients, and following them up, you would think that they would be keen to publish the results. So it’s surprising that our best estimates…
A study published today shows that clinical trials with industry sponsorship report greater benefits and fewer harmful side effects. In the discussion, the authors note that most reviews and guidelines…
Public health researchers have stepped up their campaign to access clinical trial data about influenza drug Tamiflu, amid concerns about its effectiveness. Professor Peter Gøtzsche, leader of the Nordic…
We work at the Australasian Cochrane Centre and we dread being asked what we do for a living. This isn’t because we don’t like what we do, in fact we love it. It’s because when we explain that our job…
Director, Evidence and Methods, National COVID-19 Clinical Evidence Taskforce; Associate Professor (Research), Cochrane Australia, School of Population Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Monash University