Analytical and Critical Thinking and Experience-Based Medicine
Versus 'Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM)' DOGMA
Below I want to share with you a BRILLIANT COMMENT FROM MAMA BEAR TO MY POST: 'THAT'S WHAT 'COVID' IS', reflecting on the topic of EVIDENCE-BASED MEDICINE DOGMA
(Dogma is defined as "a belief or set of beliefs that is accepted by the members of a group without being questioned or doubted." or according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary: something held as an established opinion, especially : a definite authoritative tenet - a principle, belief, or doctrine generally held to be true, especially: one held in common by members of an organization, movement, or profession)
Mama Bear (Mama Bear Apr 16) replied to your comment on THAT'S WHAT "COVID" IS:
Ok, after 2+ years of reading medical journals and studies daily for a minimum of an hour but sometimes 4hrs or more, due to the fact that my 10 yr old was in the cardiac ICU and in the hospital for 9 days, diagnosed with MIS-C, myocarditis, acute kidney failure, thrombocytopenia, lymphocytopenia, anemia, heart failure - and many more issues, I have to say...I CANNOT AGREE MORE with outraged human’s conclusions. For anyone wondering, my daughter is now doing remarkably well, I am so glad I went outside on my own for answers or I don’t believe she would be where she is now. I wanted to add a specific anecdotal point here: We had to see 3 departments at least 1 time per month for a full year post hospital - infectious diseases, cardiology and rheumatology. The rheumatology Dr. Is an M.D./Ph.D. Because Mis-C has lots of similarities to a longer known syndrome “Kawasaki Disease” - I was curious about the potential role of air born toxins as a causal source for MIS-C. When I asked the rheumatologist about this potential link, she looked at us and firmly told my daughter not to worry about the air, going outside, etc....dismiss this idea completely. HUGE CLUE. The only thing all 3 departments did for a year at every visit was lecture us about getting vaccinated. The only thing. When I brought up how I was already trying to heal my daughter from “spike protein” so why would I go get more, they could never answer and would just pass me off to the next department to start the lecture from scratch. I endlessly heard them say, for hours on end...”we don’t understand the virus, because it’s new and will take years to study, but (illogically) we 100% know that the vaccine is the only thing you should do to treat your symptoms.” Absolutely nuts and just basic deductive reasoning is all that is needed to know that they were lying. One of the many things I’ve learned, is that modern medicine loves “viruses” because they are “mysterious and ambiguous and complex” but they don’t ever seem interested in environmental factors nor nutrient panels. They didn’t even check my daughters vitamin d levels nor micronutrient levels. I had her lymphocytes cultured outside of the hospital system and she was critically low on vitamin d and others when she got sick. My point is that we have an entire system that is so sick itself that we’ll educated doctors are both corrupt and willing to convince themselves that it is acceptable to study only areas and treatments that they can monetize; and any real answers (often simple and obvious and free or cheap) are avoided by them at all costs. They are the anti-doctors, they are abusive sociopaths, willing to kill children and convinced they are doing the right thing, having divorced themselves from honest inquiry, shutting down any human empathy and curiosity, they think their conclusions are rational but they are only rational because they rigged the system and are making conclusions based on absolute fraudulent foundations. Yes, Outraged Human, we must use critical thinking.... not even the educated doctors (and researchers (for the most part) are doing this whatsoever!!!
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00268-005-7910-1 History and Development of Evidence-based Medicine | SpringerLink
This article illustrates the timeline of the development of evidence-based medicine (EBM).
The term "evidence-based medicine" is relatively new.
In fact, as far as we can tell, investigators from McMaster's University began using the term during the 1990s. EBM was defined as "a systemic approach to analyze published research as the basis of clinical decision making." Then in 1996, the term was more formally defined by Sacket et al., who stated that EBM was "the conscientious and judicious use of current best evidence from clinical care research in the management of individual patients."
https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o702
The illusion of evidence based medicine | The BMJ
Evidence based medicine has been corrupted by corporate interests, failed regulation, and commercialisation of academia, argue these authors
The advent of evidence based medicine was a paradigm shift intended to provide a solid scientific foundation for medicine. The validity of this new paradigm, however, depends on reliable data from clinical trials, most of which are conducted by the pharmaceutical industry and reported in the names of senior academics.
The release into the public domain of previously confidential pharmaceutical industry documents has given the medical community valuable insight into the degree to which industry sponsored clinical trials are misrepresented.1234
Until this problem is corrected, evidence based medicine will remain an illusion.
The philosophy of critical rationalism, advanced by the philosopher Karl Popper, famously advocated for the integrity of science and its role in an open, democratic society. A science of real integrity would be one in which practitioners are careful not to cling to cherished hypotheses and take seriously the outcome of the most stringent experiments.5 This ideal is, however, threatened by corporations, in which financial interests trump the common good.
Medicine is largely dominated by a small number of very large pharmaceutical companies that compete for market share, but are effectively united in their efforts to expanding that market.
The short term stimulus to biomedical research because of privatisation has been celebrated by free market champions, but the unintended, long term consequences for medicine have been severe.
Scientific progress is thwarted by the ownership of data and knowledge because industry suppresses negative trial results, fails to report adverse events, and does not share raw data with the academic research community.
Patients die because of the adverse impact of commercial interests on the research agenda, universities, and regulators.
The pharmaceutical industry’s responsibility to its shareholders means that
priority must be given to their hierarchical power structures, product loyalty, and public relations propaganda over scientific integrity.
Although universities have always been elite institutions prone to influence through endowments, they have long laid claim to being guardians of truth and the moral conscience of society.
But in the face of inadequate government funding, they have adopted a neo-liberal market approach, actively seeking pharmaceutical funding on commercial terms. As a result, university departments become instruments of industry: through company control of the research agenda and ghostwriting of medical journal articles and continuing medical education, academics become agents for the promotion of commercial products.6
When scandals involving industry-academe partnership are exposed in the mainstream media, trust in academic institutions is weakened and the vision of an open society is betrayed.
The corporate university also compromises the concept of academic leadership. Deans who reached their leadership positions by virtue of distinguished contributions to their disciplines have in places been replaced with fundraisers and academic managers, who are forced to demonstrate their profitability or show how they can attract corporate sponsors. In medicine, those who succeed in academia are likely to be key opinion leaders (KOLs in marketing parlance), whose careers can be advanced through the opportunities provided by industry. Potential KOLs are selected based on a complex array of profiling activities carried out by companies, for example, physicians are selected based on their influence on prescribing habits of other physicians.7 KOLs are sought out by industry for this influence and for the prestige that their university affiliation brings to the branding of the company’s products. As well-paid members of pharmaceutical advisory boards and speakers’ bureaus, KOLs present results of industry trials at medical conferences and in continuing medical education.
Instead of acting as independent, disinterested scientists and critically evaluating a drug’s performance, they become what marketing executives refer to as “product champions.”
Ironically, industry sponsored KOLs appear to enjoy many of the advantages of academic freedom, supported as they are by their universities, the industry, and journal editors for expressing their views, even when those views are incongruent with the real evidence.
While universities fail to correct misrepresentations of the science from such collaborations,
critics of industry face rejections from journals, legal threats, and the potential destruction of their careers.8
This uneven playing field is exactly what concerned Popper when he wrote about
suppression and control of the means of science communication.9
The preservation of institutions designed to further scientific objectivity and impartiality (i.e., public laboratories, independent scientific periodicals and congresses) is entirely at the mercy of political and commercial power;
vested interest will always override the rationality of evidence.10
Regulators receive funding from industry and use industry funded and performed trials to approve drugs, without in most cases seeing the raw data.
(without in most cases seeing the raw data !!!!!!!!!)
What confidence do we have in a system in which drug companies are permitted to “mark their own homework” rather than having their products tested by independent experts as part of a public regulatory system?
Unconcerned governments and captured regulators are unlikely to initiate necessary change to remove research from industry altogether and clean up publishing models that depend on reprint revenue, advertising, and sponsorship revenue.
Our proposals for reforms include:
liberation of regulators from drug company funding;
taxation imposed on pharmaceutical companies to allow public funding of independent trials;
and, perhaps most importantly,
anonymised individual patient level trial data posted, along with study protocols, on suitably accessible websites so that third parties, self-nominated or commissioned by health technology agencies, could rigorously evaluate the methodology and trial results.
With the necessary changes to trial consent forms, participants could require trialists to make the data freely available. The open and transparent publication of data are in keeping with our moral obligation to trial participants—real people who have been involved in risky treatment and have a right to expect that the results of their participation will be used in keeping with principles of scientific rigour. Industry concerns about privacy and intellectual property rights should not hold sway.
God help everyone not to get sick and need a doctor...I've never thought we will be in the point we are today, the point where the system is protecting the wrong doing and medical superficiality. I guess this is the time for the transition to "no hospitals", AI doctors, online heath care etc.
The virus was so new, that nobody cared for autopsies (banned) like when a new thing is showing up in medical field, that was the first sign of the big lie, the second being the ban on the treatments. Prayers for mama bear and all . 🙏
Fantastic comment Mama Bear.
Great info all round
🕊🙏🌅