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Statistician whose work helped save millions of people passes away

Statistician whose work helped save millions of people passes away

STATISTICIAN Paul Meier, who has died aged 87, was a man who was relatively unknown to the general public but whose work has helped save the lives of millions of people across the world.

It was his work in the area of clinical medical trials which was to have this world-wide impact.

He developed methods which led to a system that randomised which patients received an experimental treatment during such trials and helped gather vital information on the efficacy of the drugs being used.

Before the introduction of randomised trials, involving thousands of patients, doctors did not have a clear picture of what worked and what did not.

However, doctors were at first doubtful over the use of these large-scale randomised trials, but were then shocked to discover how much important information they yielded.

One of the early projects that Mr. Meier worked on was the trial of a polio vaccine in the U.S. Using the randomised method it was shown that the vaccine worked extremely well in preventing the disease.

The method used to gather such information is today known as the Kaplan-Meier estimator.

In 1958 Mr. Meier had submitted a paper on his work to the Journal of the American Statistical Association. At the same time another statistician, Edward L. Kaplan, submitted a paper on similar work.

The editor of the Journal urged both men to combine their work and they co-authored the final paper which was to introduce the Kaplan-Meier estimator.

Over the past 50 years this method has been used in tens of thousands of clinical trials and has helped in the development of drugs and treatments which have saved millions of lives.

 

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