Is Evidence-Based Medicine Socialized Medicine?
Today, Glen Reynolds of Instapundit linked to a rather heated denunciation of Evidence-Based Medicine. The term, vigorously debated in medicine, may not be familiar to those not part of the industry. The definition involves two major issues. One is the medical literature and what is called a randomized trial. This involves a new, or occasionally a standard, form of treatment. The question to be answered is whether the tested form of treatment is better than the control form, which may be no treatment at all. The treating physicians, or institutions, and the patients being treated, ideally, should not know whether the treatment being given is the test version or the control. Obviously, this is easier to do with pills. For ethical reasons, it is difficult to do with surgery although a very few such trials have occurred. Arthroscopy of joints involves very small incisions and a few sham operation trials have been conducted to test the effect of arthroscopic surgery. Those studies are very
