Is medical science so shaky? – to need lobbyists to take the scientific training out of competitive therapies
Marcus Blackmore cites an interesting article (1) discussing the vagaries of academics pressuring training institutes on what they should class as scientific therapies. Surely the universities have the intelligence to judge merits of their courses themselves, and shouldn’t the expressed bias preclude lobbyists from groups such as “Friends of Science in Medicine”(FSM) from positions of deciding where funding should go?
FSM’s fear is understandable, even as far back as 1993 Studies in the US (2) have found more integrative care visits than visits to primary care physicians, and generally by highly educated clients. The visit statistics aren’t surprising either, given reports of Journal of the American Medical Association research (3) stating “there are at least 100,000 deaths from pharmaceutical drugs each year in the USA, even when taken as prescribed”.
1) http://marcusblackmore.com.au/2012/05/08/a-new-perspective/
2) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8418405
3) http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/272/23/1851.extract ( Error in Medicine, Lucian L. Leape, JAMA. 1994;272(23):1851-1857.doi:10.1001/jama.1994.03520230061039)
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