I'm cutting and pasting below a traders snippet about why he is...

I'm cutting and pasting below a traders snippet about why he is shorting MSB. Can anybody refute/discuss the point made about the 13.3% mortality rate for placebos being a highly unusual base point when in other CHF studies across the board that's not the case? If true that's seriously disturbing.



One of the salient results of the Phase II Revascor study was the mortality benefit seen at 6 months with Revascor. 4.4% of Revascor patients died at 6 months and 13.3% of placebo of the patients died at 6 months. That sounds good at first blush but these results are a bit abnormal.

Our team reviewed quite a few CHF studies and the 13.3% death rate for placebo at 6 months was very abnormal. The average mortality at 6 months in the studies we reviewed was 4.17%. So, our meta-analysis shows two things: The Revascor arm had mortality that was about normal, exactly what we see across many studies. The control group had a very strange high death rate. In fact, it is the highest 6-month mortality rate for a CHF study that we can find. It is not statistically reliable to compare outcomes across trials (the aggregate patient population could be much sicker), but it was telling to see these mortality levels are highly unusual if you assume the null hypothesis.