Read on Twitter
My first ever twitter thread is going to be on a subject on which I am truly an expert: why my mom is the greatest. Also, it's going to be about remdesivir. (1/12)
First, my mom is a badass doc and single mom (literally how?) to my sister and me. When I was little, we would play catch with a koosh ball while she was on conference calls rewriting schizophrenia practice guidelines (2/12)
Side bar, that was confusing for a lot my teachers as she'd write absent notes on the backs of recycled practice guideline drafts. You can imagine... (3/12)
Second, in her career she has *literally* changed the world for the better. You guys know http://clinicaltrials.gov ? Yeah, she ran it for over a decade. (4/12)
You know the classic med school lecture on publication bias? An investigator does 20 trials on drug A, and only publishes the one trial that shows drug A works. Yeah, http://clinicaltrials.gov FIGHTS that by being a required registry of all trials before they start. (5/13)
As my mom would say, this means we know "the denominator". And that is ESSENTIAL to practicing evidence based medicine. (6/13)
But there's MORE. While my mom was there, she did quite a bit to increase transparency of clinical trials, which is literally life saving work. (7/13)
One rule she wrote? Investigators running a clinical trial need to register IN ADVANCE what their outcome is going to be. Essentially, you have to declare what goal posts you are moving. (8/13 )
And if you change your primary outcome (also known as "moving the goal posts " also known as manipulating data to look good), there will be a PERMANENT, SEARCHABLE record of it. (9/13 )
(Kind of like if you change your twitter thread numbering midway)
(Kind of like if you change your twitter thread numbering midway)
And this is how we get to remdesivir. The drug that (is probably not) the miracle cure for COVID-19. Recently, news broke that the trial investigators changed their outcome measure mid trial, which casts legit doubt on their findings. (10/13 ) https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/01/government-researchers-changed-metric-measure-coronavirus-drug-remdesivir-during-clinical-trial/
Why do we know this happened? BECAUSE MY MOM WROTE THE DAMN RULE (11/13)
So for mother's day, yeah we sent flowers. But I wanted to do more. Aside from studying statistics (her eternal request of all physicians), I thought I could help spread the word of her incredible impact on the world of medicine. (12/ 13)
So please, teach someone about clinical trials dot gov. It's an amazing resource that you benefit from, even if you don't know it. And my amazing, genius, glorious mom built. that. shit. END THREAD. (13/13)
P.S. give my mom (new to twitter) a follow: @DeborahZarin , I love you. Happy Mother's Day. I hope I'm 54% the Dr. Zarin that you are.
