How much medicine is actually ‘evidence based?” Nineteen years go, in a British Medical article called “Where is the wisdom?” the opening paragraph contained this information:
“There are perhaps 30,000 biomedical journals in the world and they have grown steadily by 7 % a year…”
(Just think how many there are now!)
“… yet only about 15% of medical interventions are supported by solid scientific evidence… this is partly because only 1% of the articles in medical journals are scientifically sound… if it is true that ‘every defect is a treasure’ then we are sitting on King Solomon’s mine.”
The situation today is actually worse, because medical technology has exploded to the point where treatments used in ICU, like this famed ECMO treatment for flu patients, are not yet based on an “evidence base” because until they’ve been used on lots of adult patients (guinea pigs), the evidence base can’t be written up. Few patients know that ECMO is experimental. Most think that all ICU treatment is solidly science based.
When an “evidence-based” review cast doubt over the use of albumin in emergency treatment, ICU experts got very upset. Ironically, their replies provided no evidence to support their dismissal of the review! Another article rebutting the Cochrane review also glossed over the fact that they too were hung with their own inadequacies. The Cochrane team had to review 'garbage' for evidence, ... and therefore, concluded that the treatment was “garbage”. You know? Garbage in, garbage out. Whose fault is that?
The medical system has a love hate relationship with evidence based medicine. They love it, … when the evidence suits themselves, but hate it, when the evidence doesn’t suit their own beliefs. They will use treatments for which there is no evidence base, when it suits themselves, and dismiss other treatment modalities,.... when it suits them to do so. They can see no hypocrisy in this.
People always assume that VACCINES are well proven using “evidence based” medicine. After all, people like Dr Paul Offit say that vaccines are the best tested of all medicine. (Which if true, is actually an indictment on all the rest of medicine.) But this belief people and skeptics have, is reinforced by the medical policy makers, who go to Skeptic conferences and reinforce the dogma. Have the skeptics bothered to go and read the “evidence” for themselves?
I giggled when I read this medical article whine called, “Why is evidence based medicine so harsh on vaccines. An exploration of the method and it’s natural biases?”
The article stated: “It is disappointing on the surface that two 20th century victories for modern medicine appear to have collided with the failure of evidence-based medicine to find support in the literature for cherished practices in vaccinology.”
This article came hard on the heels of yet another evidence based review finding the flu vaccine as useful as a pogo stick for a fish. One of the authors is the editor of the medical journal ‘VACCINE’ and is so dyed in the wool, you can be sure that "evidence based medicine" will never get in the way of any vaccine!
And it’s funny how “evidence based medicine” has natural biases when it doesn’t suit the vaccinologists, who of course, couldn’t possible have their own “natural biases”!
Most people at ground zero in the medical profession have no idea how much of what they do to people is NOT evidence based, and neither do they realise that there is a huge closet of secrets about which they know nothing, and which is full to busting with skeletons just ready to tumble out if they open the door.
Most skeptics don’t realise that either.
When asked to jump to the defence of a cause, they don't ask why, they just ask, "How high?" And never stop to think about it.
