Unscientific Medicine

A new study in the Journal of Internal Medicine regarding treatment of infectious diseases found the same shocking inadequacy as previous studies. The researchers concluded that only 14 percent of the recommended treatments are based on sound scientific evidence. This finding is right in line with all the other studies that have found only 10 to 15 percent of medicine to be science based.

The researchers discovered that, even when doctors follow existing medical guidelines to the letter, 86 percent of the time they are using treatments that have little or no scientific support. The problem is when doctors follow the existing guidelines, they mistakenly believe they are practicing “evidence-based medicine,” but there is no scientific evidence behind the guidelines. In reality, the guidelines are based on the assumptions or opinions of the members of the guideline-drafting panel.

Most people have the misconception that their doctor is using the best that modern science has to offer. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reason why conventional medicine can’t cure disease, and instead causes disease, is because most of what our doctors have been taught has little or no basis in science. Numerous studies have determined that conventional medicine is unscientific and so far behind the science that it has become one of our leading causes of disease and the leading cause of death in the United States. Most of medical practice is based on a collection of old wives tales and personal opinion. The results are disastrous, causing a sharp decline in the health of the American people, making people sick, keeping people sick and running the costs up to unsustainable levels.

A landmark study by the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment concluded that only 10 to 15 percent of conventional medical treatment has any basis in science. This means that 85 to 90 percent of medical practice has never been proven by scientific method to be safe and effective. Over the last century, there have been unprecedented advances in science, but conventional medicine has not translated this knowledge into clinical practice. Physicians have little training in science and no idea how to read, interpret or understand the scientific literature. Because of this, most of the medical research published in the leading medical journals is poorly directed, deeply flawed and often reaches conclusions that are not supported by the data in the study. No wonder when the eminent scientist Linus Pauling commented on cancer research, he called it “a fraud.”

Conventional medicine is now so far behind our advances in science, and the situation has become so serious, that the prestigious Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences studied the matter and issued a report in 2001. This report, that “between the health care we now have and the health care we could have lies not just a gap but a chasm.” This chasm exists because medicine has failed miserably to keep up with the advances in science over the last century and to translate that knowledge into clinical practice. The Academy called for “a fundamental, sweeping redesign” in the way medicine is practiced. It’s been 10 years since that report was issued, and that sweeping redesign hasn’t happened and isn’t happening. Medical practice is still mostly unscientific, ineffective and dangerous.

Given the fact that most of medical practice is unscientific guesswork, what is the average person to do? The answer is to educate yourself so you can get healthy, stay healthy and avoid the need for medical treatment. Health is a choice, but you have to learn how to choose it.