TUCSON, Ariz., Dec. 13, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The early 1990s movement called “evidence-based medicine” or EBM, full of the noble intention of incorporating high quality research into clinical practice, has displaced the doctor-patient unit as the ultimate decision-making authority and encourages totalitarian medicine, writes Richard Amerling, M.D., in the winter issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
“Most doctors have become so dependent on guidelines that they have lost the ability to problem-solve, to think critically, and to practice real clinical medicine,” he states.
Traditional medicine depends on “understanding pathophysiology and pathology (i.e., basic science), with careful patient management including following response to treatments,” he explains. EBM, in contrast, “relies heavily on studies of large populations and therefore statistics, which are inherently unreliable and easy to manipulate. It exalts metanalyses, statistical compilations of many studies, which can be created to support almost any pre-conceived idea.”
Most physicians, he states, are unable to understand, let alone deconstruct, the statistics. Thus, they are unlikely to challenge them.
“The transition from traditional, scientific medical practice based on treating patients as individuals towards EBM and a ‘population health’ model has been greatly amplified by the near abolition of independent private medical practice.”
Dr. Amerling writes that “EBM arrogantly claims for itself the mantle of ‘science,’ but is actually pseudoscientific.” It has directed physicians’ response to the COVID-19 epidemic, he states. He calls the response “anti-scientific” and highly coercive, noting that intrepid individuals who described remarkable results using repurposed drugs were censored and harassed, rather than being embraced and emulated.
“We are witnessing the destruction of individualized, ethical, science-based medicine, and with it, the medical profession,” he concludes. “The acceptance of EBM has played a major role in its demise.”
The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a national organization representing physicians in all specialties since 1943.
