Parachutes, randomized controlled trials, and all-cause mortality

In 2003 and 2018 researchers discussed the perils of blind reliance on randomized controlled trials that have been substituted for medical experience and clinical acumen. Although these past articles do well to shed light on this issue, they neglect to discuss the topic of all-cause mortality in controlled trials. The current essay seeks to fill this void and expand the thought put into the appropriateness of all-cause mortality, especially when trials extend excessively far into the future. To do this effectively the current essay leans on trial data from statin research and evidence from cancer screening—where researchers have explicitly called for all-cause mortality to be used in lieu of cancer or cardiovascular specific mortality. The issue with such an endpoint is that it obfuscates the issue at hand, namely that a specific intervention is intended to have a specific effect, not that a specific intervention is supposed to have any kind of effect. The effect(s) of medical interventions ought to be relevant to their intended mechanism of action and not simply any positive effect that can be pulled from trial data.