Evidence-Based Medicine Matters

Adrian Koster

Agronomist, Editor & Journalist

It is vital that all medicines for MS are evidence based, efficacious, safe with least side-effects, ethically produced and researched, also that there is an immediate end to the plethora of "off-label" prescriptions which the medical profession is apt to prescribe. MS medicines should be dedicated for MS and not side-lined from very many other medical conditions for which they were originally designed and researched.

The stringency of prescription crop protection agrochemicals/products is more rigidly adhered to than is often the case in MS medicine. A crop consultant has to match the crop disease to the registered limitations of the product and has to identify the crop disease or nutritional shortcoming to justify and write the prescription. In MS medicine there can be too much guessing and assumption so that unwanted, unintended side-effects may outweigh the prescription itself.