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Why fair tests are needed: a brief history

Editor, James Lind LibraryOxford, UK

Key Words: evidence-based medicine

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Why do we need fair tests of treatments in health care? Have not doctors, for centuries, "done their best" for their patients? Sadly, there are many examples of doctors and other health professionals harming their patients because treatment decisions were not informed by what we consider now to be reliable evidence about the effects of treatments. With hindsight, health professionals in most if not all spheres of health care have harmed their patients inadvertently, sometimes on a very wide scale. Indeed, patients themselves have sometimes harmed other patients when, on the basis of untested theories and limited personal experiences, they have encouraged the use of treatments that have turned out to be harmful.

The question is not whom we might blame, but whether the harmful effects of inadequately tested treatments can be reduced. They can, to a great extent, firstly, by avoiding applying untested theories about the effects of treatment . . . [Full text of this article]