Direct and Forthright, damming and yet universally encouraging at the same time.

How do you write a book that unilaterally condemns the overbearing, controlling and often debilitating hand evidence based medicine has placed over the medical industry, but does not throw the baby out with the bathwater?

In The Global Catastrophe that is Evidence-Based Medicine, the author has somehow managed to do exactly that - written with a refreshingly direct and simple approach on a subject that is often beset with complication and obscuration.

Evidence based medicine has fallen foul of the very trappings that it was designed to address, and it is ironic that it is now defended with an almost religious like zeal that does not allow its relevance, flaws and weaknesses to be assessed clinically and holistically.

If something is broken, then all options should be on the table on how to fix it. And more books like this should be written.

This book addresses many of the questions many of us have probably quietly asked, but not been allowed to publicly question for fear of recrimination. Certainly this book speaks on behalf of many doctors I have spoken to over the years who have quietly agreed, but not been allowed to say otherwise to their colleagues or industry overseers.

For many years, I could not understand why, for example, occurrences we could not explain were written off as placebo effect, as though that was a negative thing, where the word placebo was used as a means to suggest that what clearly occurred did not occur.

When it is clear that just because you do not understand the mechanism of cause, did not mean that it did not happen.

But we have entered an age when that is exactly the line of thinking that is contaminating medicine. If the relationship between cause and effect is not understood, then the effect is assumed not to have happened.

And moreso, potential healing processes or mechanisms are not only ignored, but discouraged and in some cases banned merely because they are not yet understood. And yes, that is done under the guise of "safety", even when there is no evidence of harm having been done.

Ironically, other processes and products are deemed acceptable because the relationship between the cause and outcome has been proven, even through there are registrable and potentially dangerous side effects. It is as though we give greater credibility to a product, because it is understood how it works, even though it may have unwanted side effects, than to a product or process that has no identifiable side effects, but seems to work, even though we don't know how.

That is the definition of crazy - when our thirst for understanding becomes clearly more important than the outcome. And that is a blight on the medical industry at large.

What is often self evident is often ignored because it has not been subject to the expensive and often reduction process we refer to as evidence based medicine.There is no doubt evidence based medicine has its place. But evidence based medicine relies on the application of strictly enforced controls, and a reasoning process that relies purely on the removal of contaminating variables.That is quite a party trick when you are talking about the biology of the human body, and the myriad of variables that ensue. It is, in many cases statistically and practically impossible to do so, and yet evidence based medicine seems to ignore this very simple and self evident fact and assumes that it can be the only verifiable means of assessment - when it is clearly in many cases the wrong tool for the job due to its own self imposed limitations.

Non-the-less, that is the path we have now embarked upon, and it is books like this that give us call to question if that path is the only path we should be walking down when it comes to medicine and healing.This book very clearly outlays all of the issues surrounding clinical medicine in a very simple format that is easy to read and understand and seeks to bring a balanced approach back to medicine whereby the skills of the practitioner to diagnose, consider, and apply what they have observed in the patient are once again given due consideration alongside the hand of the evidence provided by "evidence based medicine."

Worth Pondering