Does "evidence-based medicine" diminish the physician’s role?

Evidence based medicine, since the 1970′s, depended upon the randomized, controlled trial. It rests upon the assumption that evidence should be determined and applied as a basis for medical decision-making. Evidence is based upon quantities, similarities, populations, and averages, rather than qualities, idiosyncracies, individualization, and specifics.

Evidence-based medicine is a “trial and error” process of a clinical trials to see what might “appear” to be improving cancer survival. It is the mindset of rewarding academic achievement and publication over all else. There is this aurora that organizations, government agencies, scientists, researcher and even practitioners work together, sharing information for the benefit of patients.

Each group has its own priorities and its own agenda. Moreover, the image of cooperation between these different groups only gives the illusion that reform isn’t needed. The present system exists to serve academic achievement and publication, but not to serve the best interests of people.

The demise of the “discoverer” type with its not so well organized risk-taking, in favor of the “investigator” culture, well organized, exhaustive analysis of trivial hypotheses, is a perfect example of thirty years of the “trial and error” mind-set that has occupied cancer research. A dysfunctional culture that pushes tens of thousands of physicians and scientists toward the goal of finding the tiniest improvements in treatment rather than genuine breakthroughs, that rewards academic achievement and publication even though their proven activity has little to do with “curing” cancer.

While new regimens “appear” to be improving survival, when these same regimens are tested on a wider range of cancer patients, the results have been very disappointing. In other words, oncologists at a single institution may obtain a 40 – 50 percent response rate (not cure rate) in a tightly controlled study, when these same regimens are tested in a real-world setting, the response rates may be 17 – 27 percent.

Also, whatever clinical response that has resulted to the average number of patients in a randomized trial, is no indication of what will happen to an individual at any particular time. They are trying to identify the “best guess” treatment for the average patient. You cannot mate notoriously heterogeneous diseases into “one-size-fits-all” treatments.