Evidence-Based Medicine Matters

Dr Simon Festing

Director, Research Defence Society

Evidence based... research

It should be obvious to all that modern medicine must be evidence-based. The alternative is quackery. This applies not just to clinical research, but to all the research that goes before. To produce any effective and reasonably safe medicine we must first understand the healthy body, then what goes wrong in disease, then identify targets in the body and medicines that may act on the target. And that’s just the beginning. The whole endeavour will only work if it’s based on the evidence produced at each stage of the research. That evidence must be as good as it possibly can be, whether it relies on the study of chemicals, cells, animals, humans or populations.