Medical advice only half right?

Further to my last post, the following is an excerpt from the New York Times March 16th 2003.

DR. Lisa Sanders, M.D. writes:

"A decade ago, I stood alongside my 99 fellow freshmen as we were welcomed into the ranks of medicine in a 'white coat ceremony.' Here, on our first day of med school, we were presented with the short white coats that proclaimed us part of the mystery and the discipline of medicine. During that ceremony, the dean said something that was repeated throughout my education: half of what we teach you here is wrong-unfortunately, we don't know which half. At the time it was hard to believe. Within those walls, in the anatomy lab, in the lecture hall, you feel that you are being shown the secrets of how the body is put together, how it lives, how it works, how it dies. It has the feel of authority and certainty. Like math, it has a feeling of inevitability. But now, as a practicing doctor and teacher of residents, I relive that dean's aphorism daily. Medicine is, and always has been, an evolving discipline. And this necessarily means that what we know about medicine is constantly changing; that medicine is forever putting forth, and simultaneously upending assumptions. This is particularly true at this moment. Virtually all of our medical therapeutic options are being questioned, evaluated and re-evaluated by researchers across the globe."

Dr. Sanders admits that some top professors in medical school acknowledge that "half" of what they teach may be wrong. So in which "half" are you going to put your faith?

It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man. Psalm 118:8.

THINK!

Seventy percent of doctors treating Medicare patients flunked an exam on their knowledge of prescribing for older adults (Public Citizen Newsletter, July 2002).

In 2013, of the 43,982 drug overdose deaths in the United States, 22,767 (51.8%) were related to pharmaceuticals ("Prescription Drug Overdose in the United States: Fact  Sheet." CDC.gov, March 2, 2015).

Doctors with the worst malpractice records keep treating patients: Among the nearly 100,000 doctors who made payments to resolve malpractice claims from 2001 to 2011, roughly 800 were responsible for all the dollars paid and their total payouts averaged about $5.2 million per doctor. Yet fewer than one in five faced any sort of licensure action by their state medical boards ("Thousands of doctors practicing despite errors, misconduct." USA Today, August 20, 2013).

The cost of drug-related injuries and deaths in the U.S. are estimated at $136 billion annually, with ADRs (Adverse Drug Reactions) occurring for about 5-20% of hospital patients (Modern Pharmaceutical Industry: A Primer, 2010).

And I am sure things are no better this side of the pond!