Cochrane is very good at what they do. This kind of systematic review is the highest standard of evidence when it comes to medical research. It's worth checking out some of their other reviews:<p><a href="http://www.cochrane.org/cochrane-reviews/top" rel="nofollow">http://www.cochrane.org/cochrane-reviews/top</a><p>Note that these are abstracts of the full reviews (which they charge for access).<p>On a side note, meta-research deserves more funding!<p><a href="http://blog.givewell.org/2013/06/06/meta-research-update/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.givewell.org/2013/06/06/meta-research-update/</a><p>edit: I linked to the wrong review before (not the one under discussion), so I edited that out. As gwern mentions in another comment, the link is broken in the BBC article. nairteashop found a different news release which seems to be the right link:<p><a href="http://www.cochrane.org/features/tamiflu-relenza-how-effective-are-they" rel="nofollow">http://www.cochrane.org/features/tamiflu-relenza-how-effecti...</a>
During the H1N1 craze in 2009 (I remember it very well), governments from all countries around the world were fighting to get enough stock of Tamiflu in case of a global Pandemic. Even at that time I thought this was ridiculous, not just because the risk of Pandemic was overblown (and the media played a huge part in it), but also because there had been no clinical trial suggesting that Tamiflu would be working against that particular strain of H1N1. Pure waste of taxpayers money by uninformed politicians reacting to panic.
I thought it was pretty well-known that Tamiflu wasn't particularly effective, and that the UK NHS had already been criticized for stockpiling it.
I was prescribed Tamiflu once a few years ago and wow .. what a weird drug. My memory might be off but I think it is supposed to reduce the length of the flu by just 2-3 days. And it has to be taken within a short period of getting the flu. Didn't feel it was worth it.
The follow-up article on this report[1] from <i>Science-Based Medicine</i> provides more details and good perspective on the difficulty in general of studying the safety and effectiveness of new treatments of any kind for any condition.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/new-evidence-same-conclusion-tamiflu-only-modestly-useful-for-influenza/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/new-evidence-same-conclu...</a>
I got given some of this in the UK when I had the sniffles during the panic. I didn't actually go to the doctors for that problem. Ultimately I didn't take them and I suspect that most people didn't or they were disposed off after the discard date. Some people walked off with a fucking huge pile of cash after that one...
It's a bit like saying we wasted millions of preparing for heavy snow in the UK this year as we got none.<p>If H1N1 or derivatives caused a serious pandemic I would much rather have some Tamiflu than not, even if it's effectiveness varied for patient to patient.<p>It's easy to say money was wasted with hindsight.
In Sweden, almost everyone was vaccinated with Pandemrix <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix</a><p>I think this is not the same exact drug as Tamiflu, but the parallels - mass vaccination etc - are worth drawing.<p>The scary thing about Pandemrix is that some people - mostly children and young adults - immediately got narcolepsy <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcolepsy" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcolepsy</a><p>Now the various investigations have all said they can find no link between narcolepsy and Pandemrix, and yet they don't really explain the suddenness of it all. Seems a hell of a coincidence.<p>Narcolepsy is not some silly little "sleep disorder". This was really brought home to me - literally - by knowing someone who's child got it hours after their Pandemrix jab =(<p>The micro-problem here is the Swedish state trying to avoid paying for care (its untreatable, as I understand it) and all that wrangling about taking responsibility. I think most parents of suffers are really out to share around the burden of responsibility, rather than caring so much about the costs of care.<p>The macro-problem is convincing people that the next time we are told to go get a jab, we should :(<p>Here's Penn & Teller talking about Vaccines: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfdZTZQvuCo</a><p>Science isn't going to win over my wife as easily as all that. And I am very divided myself, however rational I try and be.