Evidence-Based Medicine Matters

John Renish

Retired Healthcare Administrator

Evidence-based medicine is the only medicine that can assure us that it "works". Evidence-based medicine has the additional quality of offering quantifiable benefits and known risks and costs, enabling societies to make rational decisions among competitive treatments. There is no alternative medicine, only unproven medicine: if an alternative treatment's supporters can demonstrate its efficacy and safety, it automatically becomes part of orthodox medicine. During a long career in health care, I often encountered people who were ill or injured because of inattention to preventive measures or just plain ignorance. Since retiring, I have come to believe the latter cause is increasingly important in morbidity and mortality. That so many ordinary people - some of them intelligent - believe in dangerous nonsense is a public health tragedy.