I watched it some last season, but only caught the finale of this season that aired last night. Unbelievable! At least a couple people on the show lost over 50% of their original weight.
The winner, Erik, went from over 400 pounds to under 195. Look at these before and after photos:
www.nbc.com/.../erik_before1.jpgwww.nbc.com/.../erik_finale10.jpg
Hard to even believe this is the same guy!
Gull,
Unless you work in a different department of Pfizer than I do, we don't know what the cause of the excess deaths was. (If you do work in Clinical Development, then you shouldn't be posting this information here;) ). The trial was stopped because there were more deaths in the torceptrapib arm than there were in the control arm. The over site committee only sees that data and does not attempt to find a cause and effect relationship. While it is really far fetched, it could be simply that there were 30 participants all in the same bus that ran off the road. It will take several months before we know.
The point to be learned here though is that pharmaceutical companies are, in fact, companies that spend huge amounts of money to test scientific theories. Pfizer spent in excess of $800 million on the clinical trials alone to test whether raising HDL makes you healthier. Science has shown that those who have higher HDL are healthier but we don't know if externally forcing it higher does the same. In this specific case, it has been reported that torceptrapib did raise blood pressure in some patients. Others have reported that their CETP inhibitors are not raising BP so it does not appear to be a class effect. So right now, we have to wait for the analysis of each of the deaths to determine what the cause of the excess deaths was.
Leo
Gull,
Unless you work in a different department of Pfizer than I do, we don't know what the cause of the excess deaths was. (If you do work in Clinical Development, then you shouldn't be posting this information here;) ). The trial was stopped because there were more deaths in the torceptrapib arm than there were in the control arm. The over site committee only sees that data and does not attempt to find a cause and effect relationship. While it is really far fetched, it could be simply that there were 30 participants all in the same bus that ran off the road. It will take several months before we know.
The point to be learned here though is that pharmaceutical companies are, in fact, companies that spend huge amounts of money to test scientific theories. Pfizer spent in excess of $800 million on the clinical trials alone to test whether raising HDL makes you healthier. Science has shown that those who have higher HDL are healthier but we don't know if externally forcing it higher does the same. In this specific case, it has been reported that torceptrapib did raise blood pressure in some patients. Others have reported that their CETP inhibitors are not raising BP so it does not appear to be a class effect. So right now, we have to wait for the analysis of each of the deaths to determine what the cause of the excess deaths was.
Leo
