General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Either you believe in the scientific method or you don't [View all]Ms. Toad
(34,348 posts)I demand honesty from my providers - more than most traditional doctors provide to their patients - and likely more than 99% of the public demands from their care providers. I have been known to walk into the office of a doctor who is a relatively new provider with an inch and a half pile of paper to make my point when he initially refuses to have an honest discussion with me about what condition he believes my daughter has, and what her prognosis is. I have refused treatment while hospitalized because the doctors were spouting off with absolute certainty something which they could not know (I turned out to be right -which I could only establish by refusing treatment). I have designed successful treatment plans for my own uncommon condition in conjunction with my physicians (and with their blessing). I diagnosed the rare disease my daughter had - which her physician finally confirmed by running a test just to get me off his back. And I have fired two doctors for being a combination of lazy, stupid, and intellectually dishonest. I don't have the medical bandwidth or patience to maintain a relationship with a doctor who is unwilling to be honest with me about everything related to the care of anyone in my family. So you are way off the mark.
My point is that a large number of doctors with MD and DO after their names are not honest with their patients. I know that because I have had way too many interactions with both doctors - and patients treated by those doctors. I know what they have told me, andd what they haven't. I know what they have told others and what they haven't. The vast majority of people interacting with anyone with an MD or DO after their name assumes that they are being provided with evidence based medication - and have no clue, for example, when the drug they have been prescribed falls in the off label use category (20% of the time (across the board) and upwards of 95% of the time for certain drugs). For the most, part, their doctors don't offer the information - and they don't know to ask.
Yet when a care provider without an MD or DO after their name acts in the exact same manner, you call him a pseudo-scientist.
Neither one should be behaving in that manner - but this thread (and all the other similar ones) start from the assumption that the former is being honest - and the latter is not.
My point is that the line being drawn between kinds of medicine/providers is artificial. The same standard of evaluation should be applied to every care provider and every treatment - rather than throwing the stuff provided by MDs and DOs in the presumed evidence based category - and the stuff provided by everyone else in the pseudo-science category.
And, as to this thread, the evaluation of care can't be "proven by medical science" or not, because there is far more that we don't know (but we have to treat anyway) than what we do know. The best care for anything out of the ordinary is likely to be non (or low) - evidence based care arrived at with the best noodling the care team (ideally including the patient) can come up using a plan of attack similar to what I outlined in my initial post in this thread.