{"id":47363,"date":"2014-06-16T12:40:59","date_gmt":"2014-06-16T16:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=47363"},"modified":"2014-06-16T12:40:59","modified_gmt":"2014-06-16T16:40:59","slug":"requiem-for-evidence-based-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2014\/06\/16\/requiem-for-evidence-based-medicine\/","title":{"rendered":"requiem for evidence based medicine&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<br \/>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\" class=\"big\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/content\/348\/bmj.g3725\" target=\"_blank\">Evidence based medicine: a movement in crisis?<\/a><\/div>\n<div align=\"center\" class=\"small\">by Trisha Greenhalgh, Jeremy Howick, Neal Maskrey, for the Evidence Based Medicine Renaissance Group<\/div>\n<div align=\"center\" class=\"middle\"><strong><font color=\"#0000ff\">British Medical Journal<\/font><\/strong>. 2014 348:g3725<\/p>\n<div>\n<p align=\"justify\">It is more than 20 years since the evidence based medicine working group announced a &ldquo;new paradigm&rdquo; for teaching and practising clinical medicine. Tradition, anecdote, and theoretical reasoning from basic sciences would be replaced by evidence from high quality randomised controlled trials and observational studies, in combination with clinical expertise and the needs and wishes of patients. Evidence based medicine quickly became an energetic intellectual community committed to making clinical practice more scientific and empirically grounded and thereby achieving safer, more consistent, and more cost effective care. Achievements included establishing the Cochrane Collaboration to collate and summarise evidence from clinical trials; setting methodological and publication standards for primary and secondary research; building national and international infrastructures for developing and updating clinical practice guidelines; developing resources and courses for teaching critical appraisal; and building the knowledge base for implementation and knowledge translation.<\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">From the outset, critics were concerned that the emphasis on experimental evidence could devalue basic sciences and the tacit knowledge that accumulates with clinical experience; they also questioned whether findings from average results in clinical studies could inform decisions about real patients, who seldom fit the textbook description of disease and differ from those included in research trials. But others argued that evidence based medicine, if practised knowledgably and compassionately, could accommodate basic scientific principles, the subtleties of clinical judgment, and the patient&rsquo;s clinical and personal idiosyncrasies&#8230;<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">One of my pet peeves is reading an article that is either pro or con about something, but rather than starting with the conclusion and explaining the reasons, the author pretends neutrality and slides his\/her argument in at the end as if it has been forced on him\/her by the weight of evidence. I feel gamed by such an argument style. Hitler used it in Mein Kampf. Dr. Insel just did it with<img decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" hspace=\"4\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/bear-trap.gif\" \/> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nimh.nih.gov\/about\/director\/2014\/are-children-overmedicated.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">Are Children Overmedicated?<\/a> [see <a href=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2014\/06\/12\/fore-told\/\">fore&middot;told&hellip;<\/a>]. So when I have an opinion, I try to say it up front in case you have a similar affliction. In this case, I&#8217;ve supplied an image to let you know how I feel about the notion of <strong><font color=\"#200020\">Evidence&middot;Based&middot;Medicine<\/font><\/strong>. I don&#8217;t like it. <strike>It feels like a trap<\/strike>. It is a trap.<\/div>\n<p>             <\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">Who could argue with something called <strong><font color=\"#200020\">Evidence&middot;Based&middot;Medicine<\/font><\/strong>? I&#8217;ve only had careers in science [hard and soft] all my life, living and breathing <strong><font color=\"#200020\">evidence&nbsp; based&nbsp; medicine<\/font><\/strong>. What&#8217;s the alternative? But as you read above, that&#8217;s not what the term actually means. So I&#8217;ve renamed what they are talking about as <strong><font color=\"#200020\">Algorithmic Medicine<\/font><\/strong> because that seems to fit best with what they actually mean when they say, &quot;<em>Tradition, anecdote, and theoretical reasoning from basic sciences would  be replaced by evidence from high quality randomised controlled trials  and observational studies, in combination with clinical expertise and  the needs and wishes of patients.<\/em>&quot; What that means in practice is &quot;<em>evidence from <strike>high quality<\/strike> randomised controlled trials  <strike>and observational studies<\/strike><\/em>.&quot; Some reasons I don&#8217;t like <strong><font color=\"#200020\">Evidence&middot;Based&middot;Medicine <\/font><\/strong>are:<\/div>\n<ol><span class=\"small\">            <\/p>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><font color=\"#200020\">The idea generalizes a small, short-term experiment on carefully selected subjects as a paradigm for large, heterogeneous group who may take the medication for years [as if such a transformation is scientifically justified &#8211; which it rarely is].  <\/font><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><font color=\"#200020\">It is built on the phantasy that is similar to the notion that building a model airplane that flies is the last step before going into production for jumbo jets.<\/font><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><font color=\"#200020\">It opens a portal for companies with <u>only<\/u> conflicts of interest to easily insert their products into mainstream medicine effortlessly.<\/font><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><font color=\"#200020\">following from number 2., it virtually guarantees corruption [as has been shown repeatedly in a variety of venues].<\/font><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><font color=\"#200020\">While one motive of <strong>Evidence&middot;Based&middot;Medicine<\/strong> is to discourage sloppy &quot;shooting from the hip,&quot; it replaces that with an even more dangerous sloppy dependence on rote and thoughtless practice.<\/font><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><font color=\"#200020\">It has been regularly used to withhold services and treatment, denigrate anything subjective in medicine, and justify practices that are supported by trivial statistics rather than clinical effectiveness.<\/font><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><font color=\"#200020\">It discourages the time honored method of evaluating medications by their performance in wide clinical practice.<\/font><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><font color=\"#200020\">The people setting the guidelines have been not only often compromised, but also largely non-practitioners.<\/font><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><font color=\"#200020\">It was itself an idealistic and naive experiment that failed its own clinical trial.<\/font><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<p>  <\/span><\/ol>\n<div align=\"justify\">for starters&#8230; This article is by a group hoping to reform <span class=\"small\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">Evidence&middot;Based&middot;Medicine<\/font><\/strong><\/span> [the Evidence Based Medicine Renaissance Group] and I think they mean well. They want to restore clinical judgement, compassion, common sense to this concept that was instrumental in their loss in the first place. They conclude:<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">Much progress has been made and lives  have been saved through the systematic collation, synthesis, and  application of high quality empirical evidence. However, evidence based  medicine has not resolved the problems it set out to address [especially  evidence biases and the hidden hand of vested interests], which have  become subtler and harder to detect. Furthermore, contemporary  healthcare&rsquo;s complex economic, political, technological and commercial  context has tended to steer the evidence based agenda towards  populations, statistics, risk, and spurious certainty. Despite lip  service to shared decision making, patients can be left confused and  even tyrannised when their clinical management is inappropriately driven  by algorithmic protocols, top-down directives and population targets.<\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">Such  problems have led some to argue for the rejection of evidence based  medicine as a failed model. Instead we argue for a return to the  movement&rsquo;s founding principles &mdash; to individualise evidence and share  decisions through meaningful conversations in the context of a  humanistic and professional clinician-patient relationship. To  deliver this agenda, evidence based medicine&rsquo;s many  stakeholders &mdash; patients, clinicians, educators, producers and publishers  of evidence, policy makers, research funders, and researchers from a  range of academic disciplines &mdash; must work together. Many of the ideas in  this paper are not new, and a number of cross sector campaigns with  similar goals have already begun. We hope that our call for a  campaign for real evidence based medicine will open up debate and invite  readers to contribute [for example, by posting rapid responses on  bmj.com].&nbsp;<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">As for me, if I never hear the term again, that would be just fine. I think Clinical Trials are a first shot at eliminating inert and grossly unsafe medications from our pharmacopoeia &#8211; nothing more. Their centrality has been a disaster as explained eloquently by Dr. Healy in his book <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Pharmageddon-David-Healy\/dp\/0520275764\" target=\"_blank\"><font color=\"#990000\">Pharmageddon<\/font><\/a>. The operative principle here is:<\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"> <em><font color=\"#200020\">Fool me once, shame on you.<\/font><\/em><\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><em><font color=\"#200020\">Fool me twice, shame on me.<\/font><\/em> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Evidence based medicine: a movement in crisis? by Trisha Greenhalgh, Jeremy Howick, Neal Maskrey, for the Evidence Based Medicine Renaissance Group British Medical Journal. 2014 348:g3725 It is more than 20 years since the evidence based medicine working group announced a &ldquo;new paradigm&rdquo; for teaching and practising clinical medicine. Tradition, anecdote, and theoretical reasoning from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47363"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47380,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47363\/revisions\/47380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}