I have touched on this before, but it needs to be looked at again. More and
more, we are being asked about the medication we prescribe. Will it mix with
something “natural” growing on trees? And mentioning trees, I am also not a tree
hugger. I am sure trees, like us, have their bad hair days too, but they’ll have
to get their hugs somewhere else I am afraid. I once knew a tree hugger who
stopped the man with a bulldozer tearing down a tree at the rear of her house.
12 months later the tree fell over on top of it, demolishing the kitchen and
half the dining area. Trees have obviously no sense of moral gratitude.
I am, however, a conventionally trained British/Australian
style medical practitioner who has spent a lifetime practicing EBM, otherwise
known as Evidence Based Medicine. Practices that have been proven to work.
My training included six years at an Australian university
that had a good name, and still does, despite undergraduates like me. I am also
proud of my final exams taken in the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons
in London. I have the honor to have my name listed in the ‘great book’ with
luminaries such as Hunter, Jenner and Lister. I am also indebted to my tutors
during the 12 months of ‘pre-registration’, where you apply your limited
knowledge under the supervision of senior specialists. A safeguard for you, the
general public.
The ‘powers that be’ are also ensuring that we keep up to
date with a process called Continuous Medical Education (CME). That medical
education continues through to today, with CME lectures being attended by my
hospital’s doctors, and myself. Fortunately for me, the slides are in English,
even though sometimes the lecture is not.
Those ‘powers that be’ also ensure that we prescribe drugs
that are efficacious, that have been tested, and the evidence points to this. It
is not anecdotal evidence, but true scientific evidence shown by research in
many countries, with hundreds of thousands of patients. It is following that
type of evidence, that I can recommend with all good faith, that 100 mg of
aspirin a day is good medicine. I also know that prescribing a ‘statin’ drug
will lower your cholesterol levels. They have been tested. And these days, very
rigorously indeed.
I am also the first to admit that we have sometimes managed
to get it wrong. The Thalidomide story still has living examples of this.
However, the medical world-wide network is cohesive enough to ensure that this
drug was withdrawn. It is the checks and balances system that has kept western
medicine afloat. This is not to be equated with the checks and balances system
that have been incorrectly applied in the banking industry that sees the
institutions on the brink of sinking!
I am often asked my opinion on “alternative” medicine, and
all its diverse areas of ‘specialization’. As a non-tree hugger I try to avoid
direct confrontation over this. If devotees have found that they can diagnose
tumors by looking at patient’s auras through their third eye in the middle of
their foreheads, then I am genuinely pleased, in fact delighted, provided that
they have subjected the method to scientific scrutiny.
If various groups can cure cancer, epilepsy, halitosis or
lock-jaw by inserting Himalayan grasses into a fundamental orifice, then again I
am delighted. This is a medical break-through, but as such, must be subjected to
medical scrutiny. If the method stands true scientific examination (not to be
confused with anecdotal ‘evidence’) then it will be adopted by everyone,
complete with thanks to those clever people who picked the Himalayan grasses in
the first place. After all, penicillin was tripped over, not designed. But it
has had a very rigorous scientific scrutiny since.
As far as the majority of ‘folk’ remedies is concerned, I
work on the principle that if you ‘think’ it is doing you good, then it probably
is. But don’t ask me to endorse something that has not been scientifically
tested.
When the ‘alternative’ group spends more time proving their
methods, instead of complaining about non-acceptance, EBM practitioners will
give them more credence.
