Evidence-Based Medicine Matters

Professor Edzard Ernst

Professor of Complementary Medicine

It is difficult to answer why evidence-based medicine is important to me as there is no alternative. If we do not use evidence as the basis of our decisions then what else is there? Intuition, experience – both have been used in the past and both have failed dismally. So I don’t see an alternative to evidence-based medicine. Those who attack evidence-based medicine for its ‘cookbook’ or ‘straitjacket’ decisions clearly have not understood what it is.