1-5 Newer is not necessarily better

New treatments are often assumed to be better simply because they are new or because they are more expensive. However, they are only very slightly likely to be better than other available treatments. Some side effects of treatments, for example, take time to appear and it may not be possible to know whether they will appear without long term follow-up.

A treatment should not be assumed to be beneficial and safe simply because it is new, brand-named or expensive.

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Sunn Skepsis

Denne portalen er ment å gi deg som pasient råd om kvalitetskriterier for helseinformasjon og tilgang til forskningsbasert informasjon.

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Pester power and new drugs

‘New drugs by their very nature are incomplete products, as full information about their safety, effectiveness and impact on costs […]

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Herceptin

Commercial companies are not alone in trumpeting the advantages of new treatments while down-playing drawbacks. Professional hype and enthusiastic media […]

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Mechanical heart valves

Drugs are not the only treatments that can have unexpected bad effects: non-drug treatments can pose serious risks too. Mechanical […]

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Avandia

2010 saw another drug – rosiglitazone, better known by the trade name Avandia – hitting the headlines because of unwanted […]

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Vioxx

Although drug-testing regulations have been tightened up considerably, even with the very best drug-testing practices there can be no absolute […]

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Thalidomide

Thalidomide is an especially chilling example of a new medical treatment that did more harm than good. [1] This sleeping […]

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