Compare Allen Carr’s Easyway Seminars to other methods
The most impressive thing about the studies that verified the long-term success rate of Allen Carr’s Easyway Seminars is that they were independently carried out. The vast majority of the clinical studies that have been done in the field of smoking cessation are paid for by the companies that manufacture stop smoking products. When the research is not independently carried out several issues must be considered.
The issue of publication bias.
If you paid for a study to prove the efficacy of your product and the study concluded no advantage in using the product (or worse a disadvantage), would you feel like spending more money on publishing that study, ignoring what effect it might have on company profits? Or would you carefully dispose of that study and start a new one. Providing you have the money to keep running studies, eventually you should get a collection of studies that show a positive result. According to the Cochrane review of NRT trials a statistical review suggests this (publication bias) is the case.
Defining success.
When you are paying for a study you can say what questions are to be asked and you can determine what constitutes success. Studies of Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) products focus almost exclusively on quitting smoking while all but ignoring whether participants actually broke free from the addiction to nicotine. In a November 2003 study in Tobacco Control, authors Dr. Saul Shiffman and Dr. J. R. Hughes estimated that up to 36.6% of current gum users are engaged in persistent use and up to 7% of gum users and 2% of patch users were still hooked on the gum or patch at 6 months. According to the dictionary nicotine is a highly toxic, addictive chemical used commercially as an insecticide, but manufacturers of NRT products have redefined it to mean “medicine”. That way people in the study using NRT effectively get a built in 3-month head start on the control group who stop their addiction nicotine three months earlier. Because success rates decline over time, the 6-month success rate should naturally be higher for the group using NRT because they have only been nicotine free for 3 months and not 6. If the definition of success is to switch people away from smoking cigarettes and continue nicotine addiction through a “safer” method (it is still a highly toxic, addictive chemical used commercially as an insecticide), then NRT is a success … a huge success for the companies that sell NRT who are now competing for a slice of the multi billion-dollar nicotine-addicted market. We think the addict is much more interested in how to break free from their addiction to nicotine and all of its tragic consequences physical, mental, financial, and emotional, that they (and their families) must endure.
Cigarette manufacturers are now recognizing the potential of this growing sector of the nicotine market and are moving in. Recently the Marlbro cigarette empire Altria bought the USA's biggest maker of chewing tobacco, UST for $10.4bn(USD). UST makes Skoal - the new teabag like pouches that are held between the teeth and gum. British American Tobacco recently paid £2bn to take control of the Swedish company ST, which makes Snus - also pouches of tobacco for sucking. And in December 2009 Reynolds America the second largest US Tobacco company paid $44 million for Niconovum which makes nicotine gum and other NRT products. To many this seemed like a strange move for a tobacco company to make. But to Reynolds America it was a logical and strategic investment. They are in the nicotine delivery business and they are looking to take advantage of the growth sectors of the market for nicotine
Do the studies include any additional support?
In nearly all of the early clinical studies for NRT, Zyban and Champix people in the study had access to additional tools that have their own proven effectiveness such as group or individual counseling and ongoing group and phone support. How much of the success of these studies is down to the product itself and how much is due to the counseling sessions and ongoing support program?
Is the study blind?
There have been hundreds of double blind placebo trials to prove the effectiveness of NRT products. If these studies are truly blind and the participants cannot tell whether they are receiving the NRT or the placebo treatment, then it follows that the actual withdrawal of nicotine must be so slight it is undetectable. If this is the case then these products are a complete waste of (taxpayers) money, they would be trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. The theory behind NRT is that the terrible physical withdrawal of nicotine makes quitting “cold turkey” too difficult and you can improve your chances of success by gradually weaning yourself off nicotine with NRT, avoiding the terrible physical withdrawal, while breaking the habit of smoking. But if the actual physical withdrawal of nicotine is so slight that most smokers don’t even notice it (as Allen Carr has always maintained) then the difficulty in quitting smoking must lie with the psychological dependence on cigarettes. This is the issue that Allen Carr’s Easyway addresses and a patch or a pill never can.
On the other hand if the withdrawal of nicotine is noticeable, then the study cannot be blind. If people can tell that they are getting the placebo treatment and not the medication that they signed up hoping to receive, then the motivation to stay in the study goes up in smoke and along with it any credibility in the results. You see these studies do not compare real “cold turkey” quitters to people using medication. What these studies actually compare is people that sign up for the study hoping to receive medication and get it, to people that hope to receive medication and don’t get it. People that are prepared to go it alone “cold turkey” without the aid of medication are not invited to join the study and would have no motivation to do so anyway. So lets say that you decided to volunteer for a stop smoking study because you heard that there was a 50% chance that you would be given three months of free medication worth hundreds of dollars. You also believed that the medication could “double your chances” of success, so you decide it is worth a shot. Now once you are in the study, imagine being confident that you have been randomly assigned into the placebo group and the medication you had hoped to receive is nothing more than a sugar pill. Would you feel like continuing the experiment? Or would frustrated expectations have destroyed your resolve to continue? And on the other hand if you were confident that you were receiving the real medication that you believe “doubles your chances” of success, would that strengthen your resolve to continue?
So when the results show higher success rates for those using NRT, is it real scientific proof of effectiveness, or was the victory achieved by default, because the study was not truly blind?
Cherry picking subjects
In clinical trials for the drug Champix people with a history of mental illness were excluded from the studies. When you consider that it is estimated that one in four Americal adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year - then the clinical trails are not an accurate picture of the real world effectivness of the drug. Particularly when you consider the higher rates of smoking among people with mental illness. In 2010 the Centre for Disease Control & Prevention reported that 43% of adults with depression smoke, compared with 22% of those who aren't depressed.
At Allen Carr's Easyway clinics we don't ask you about your history of mental illness. We offer the same highly effective, drug free, simple cure (with the same money back guarantee) to all our clients, regardless of their history of mental illness.
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