This may sound a sensible way forward but the cost of the so-called gold standard evidence, the double-blind randomised clinically controlled trial, is totally unaffordable when it comes to plant medicines that cannot be patented as they grow in fields and woods. Moreover, the whole edifice of evidence based medicine is open to question.
There appears an assumption that the majority of mainstream medical practice is firmly rooted in an established evidence base of clinical effectiveness. However, as an ongoing study published by the BMJ Journal Evidence Based Medicine demonstrates, this is not the case. Evidence Based Medicine selects around 3000 treatments that have been subject to research analysis and publishes the outcome in a pie chart is displayed below[1]. |
The Evidence-based Medicine Pyramid
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