Are the negative effects of taking a new drug worth it

1 year ago
7.35K

Imagine that out of a group of 1,000 people who didn’t take the new drug, 10 would have heart attacks.The absolute risk
is 10 out of 1,000, or 1%.If a similar group of 1,000 people
did take the drug,the number of heart attacks would be six.
In other words, the drug could prevent four out of ten heart attacks—a relative risk reduction of 40%.Meanwhile, the absolute risk only dropped from 1% to 0.6%—but the 40% relative risk decrease sounds a lot more significant.
Surely preventing even a handful of heart attacks,
or any other negative outcome, is worthwhile— isn’t it?

Loading comments...