How would you tell if a certain medical intervention was causing excess deaths?
To determine if a medical intervention is causing excess deaths, it is necessary to conduct an analysis of mortality data to compare the number of deaths before and after the intervention. To get an accurate picture it is important to consider other factors that could be influencing the mortality rate. This can be done through a statistical analysis and evaluation of the available data. Other factors to consider include changes in population size, demographics, other changes in healthcare practices, environmental factors, and changes in the availability of services. It is also useful to compare the mortality rates of similar age groups and geographic areas in order to get a better understanding of any changes that may be associated with the intervention.
Do you honestly think that "the availability of services" could be causing significant excess deaths?
No, the availability of services is unlikely to be causing significant excess deaths. Factors such as access to health care, poverty, nutrition, environmental factors, and genetic factors are more likely to be associated with excess deaths.
Someone is claiming that a certain medical intervention that was distributed and propagandized by the government is causing hundreds of thousands of deaths. What's an easy way to test this hypothesis?
The easiest way to test this hypothesis would be to conduct a randomized controlled trial. In this type of study, people would be randomly assigned to receive either the medical intervention or a placebo, and the effects of both outcomes would then be compared. This type of study is the gold standard for testing hypotheses in medicine, and would allow scientists to accurately assess whether the medical intervention is indeed causing an increased mortality rate.
A controlled trial is impossible. Not giving the treatment in question would be considered unethical by the medical establishment that is spending vast sums of money to manufacture, distribute and propagandize in favor of the treatment regardless of what harms it may cause.
The doctors that want to do a study on a new medication or device will most likely be working on behalf of the manufacturer and thus, will likely be predisposed to find the results favorable regardless of what the actual results are.
Controlled trials involve lots of subjects, data from all subjects is collected, a control (either placebo or another drug) and a test group, and the results are then analyzed for differences between the two groups. This can be very time consuming, difficult to manage, and costly.
In the case of a new medication or device, a controlled trial would be difficult to manage. Depending on the severity and complexity of the condition in question, it may be very hard to find enough people willing to randomly accept one treatment or the other and long-term follow-up on the subjects may be needed to ensure the results are accurate. Furthermore, the cost associated with conducting such a trial could be extremely high.
In addition, the ethical implications of withholding treatment from certain subjects who need it may be too great for many researchers and medical professionals to bear. This can make it even more difficult to recruit study participants and manage a large trial. Furthermore, recruiting enough participants for a controlled trial may also be difficult due to the limited resources for recruiting in more remote areas.
Therefore, conducting a controlled trial for a new medication or device is not always feasible. However, other methods such as observational studies, case series, and even proof of principle studies can all be used to collect data on the safety and efficacy of a new treatment.