The current issue of The Lancet has a brief research letter about how ordinary people estimate the risk of drug side-effects. It demonstrates that the medical community's concept of risk is completely out of whack with the general population and that many people don't understand numbers. The Lancet says that the EU recommends classifying drug side-effect frequency into 5 ranges like 'very rare', 'rare' and so on up to 'very common.' The terms are defined as: Very common - >10% of patients Common - 1-10% Uncommon - 0.1-1% Rare - 0.01-0.1% Very Rare - <0.01% The researchers grabbed 200 undergrads (Reading Univ, UK) and told them just about the terms - not the numbers - and asked them to estimate their own risk of side effects. The students thought their risk was: Very common - 65% Common - 45% Uncommon - 18% Rare - 8% Very rare - 4% The researchers had similar results after bothering people at libraries, railroad stations and who were shopping. What totally flabbergasted the researchers (and me) is when they told people about risk using numbers, people still grossly overestimated their own risk: People were told a side effect occurs in 2% of patients, People estimated their chances of getting this side effect as 9.5% People were told a side effect occurs in 0.02% of patients, People estimated their chances of getting this side effect as 7% This is the research equivalent of asking "What is George Bush's first name?" and getting "Darlene" for an answer. The standard deviations were huge. It was 'common' that the SD value exceeded the mean. Some people got the numbers right, but then some people scored risk like 10 to 1000 times higher than reality. ***** [1] Research letters: Provision of information about drug side-effects to patients; D C Berry, P Knapp, D K Raynor; pp 853 www.thelancet.com Remember we are NOT Doctors and have NO medical training. This site is like an Encylopedia - there are many pages, many links on many topics. Support our work with any size DONATION - see left side of any page - for how to donate. You can help raise awareness of CAM.