The illusion of the magician

Howrelative risk makes a drug seem effective when it’s not

- Bryan Hubbard

Ban All Relatives. Hope you like our new campaign and will join BAR in getting rid of them. No, we’re not planning to usurp uncles or mount an attack on aunties; we all love those relatives, and they make a mean Victoria sponge when we visit.

BAR is campaigning to ban the use of the relative risk ratio (collective sound of comatose people slumping into their armchairs). But hold! It’s the rocket fuel of the pharmaceutical industry, it drives the sale of new drugs—where much of Big Pharma’s profits are to be made—and it gives the mass media exciting new things to talk about.

The relative risk ratio makes it seem that we’re all very busy being brilliant and pushing back the boundaries of disease, when actually we’re not, of course.

Let’s take as an example a news report you read: “New Drug X Reduces High Blood Pressure by 30 Percent.”

“Blimey!” you say, dropping your Twitter feed, “I’ll have some of that.” By the by, when we say “you,” we’re describing the average Everyman glancing through the news, and not the discerning WDDTY reader.