Friday, August 15, 2014

Proof that Evidence-Based Medicine can make you a bit loony?

Proof that Evidence-Based Medicine can make you a bit loony?

I have discussed the strange mentality that EBM can incubate in certain individuals previously in this blog. The so-called skeptics would probably approve heartily of the latest pronouncement from an evolutionary biologist that use of unproven treatments for the deadly disease Ebola is unethical outside of a prospective randomised controlled trial:

The same bug-eyed loonies 


that find the notion of a terminal cancer patient getting some hope through trying an innovative treatment quite awful, will probably be horrified at the prospect of someone with Ebola, which in the current outbreak has a mortality of 55%, trying an untested treatment in the hope that it may benefit them. It is an indictment of their inflexible thinking that they cannot see the difference between this situation and experimental treatment of more common but less lethal diseases. 

It's also proof that scientists by and large shouldn't stray into the field of ethics. A bit like another famous evolutionary biologist (and his followers) should keep out of religious debates. 

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