In an interview, Peto argued that the cancer death issue is not statistically valid.
There, Richard Peto, an Oxford University statistician, quieted the cancer scare before it really began.
Peto agrees in principle, although he thinks in this case the analysis was proper.
Peto serves as statistician for one Vytorin trial, but does not receive direct money from Merck and Schering-Plough.
But Peto said that combining two larger studies did not provide "any credible evidence" that Vytorin caused cancer.
Many cardiologists who defend Vytorin and Zetia rest their arguments on Peto's brilliance.
Dingell and Stupak had sent two letters to Merck and Schering-Plough, not Peto.
But Peto writes that he can best answer many of the related questions.
But Peto warns that few drugs could survive in a world where they are constantly tested against any possible risk.
Peto barely addressed that concern in his presentation, but the increase is highly statistically significant by one reading of the data.
In a rare peek at the costs of clinical trials, Peto discloses how much the studies he is involved with cost.
Several top experts in conducting clinical trials agreed with Peto's general approach and were skeptical of any link between cancer and Vytorin.
Fleming also argues that Peto's analysis of the IMPROVE-IT and SHARP studies raises "important concerns" about the integrity of those clinical trials.
Peto has presented the main defense of Vytorin with regard to cancer risk, using data from SHARP and IMPROVE-IT, another Vytorin study.
Some critics have said Peto should have lumped all three trials together.
None were entirely convinced of a link to cancer, but eight thought Peto had gone too far in completely dismissing any cancer risk.
"If you do enough significance tests, you're going to see some things that are statistically significant, " said Richard Peto, a statistician at Oxford University.
Peto lumped together data from two ongoing studies, SHARP and IMPROVE-IT, and found 97 cancer deaths on Zetia vs. 72 on placebo or Zocor.
Peto writes that he and his colleagues at CTSU take no honoraria, consultancy fees or other payments, although companies occasionally pay for their travel accommodations.
Anderson Cancer Center says he finds much of Peto's analysis convincing.
Professor Tim Peto, consultant in infectious diseases at the University of Oxford, said the original paper in Science came as a great surprise to experts.
"These continually changing hypotheses are a misuse of statistics, " Peto says.
Fleming writes Peto's was the right approach, since the point was to see if the cancer risk that shows up in SEAS would show up elsewhere.
He writes the data in the Peto analysis should only have been made available to the committees monitoring the safety of the patients in SHARP and IMPROVE-IT.
Peto's letter says the companies had almost no role in planning this analysis, which was made public via a press release and press conference on July 21.
The crux of Peto's statistical argument is that the increase in cancer deaths should not be seen as trustworthy unless it shows up in a second trial.
The study, published online March 18 in the journal The Lancet, was conducted in part by the eminent epidemiologist Sir Richard Peto of the University of Oxford.
"If this sort of procedure is followed, then lots of drugs will be classified as hazardous, and that's just not in the interest of public health, " Peto says.
But Oxford University's Richard Peto, one of the world's top statisticians, presented an analysis of two ongoing Vytorin studies that he said showed the apparent cancer risk was a fluke.
Peto points out that hundreds of drugs are being studied in thousands of clinical trials, and sometimes a study will show a drug causes cancer or extends survival just by chance.
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