Sharon,

I read your article on, "Why Doctors Hate Science" recently, and CER is necessary to establish standards of care that are reasonable and necessary for those who seek medical advice and recovery from illnesses that may exist.

Those that are attempting to instill fear regarding CER are using the same arguments that were used when universal health care has historically been considered in the U.S.  Baseless claims such as denial of treatment due to cost, or eliminating the discretion of the heatlh care provider.  Clearly, those are conclusions based on absurd speculation without merit.

CER is not about who gets treatment and who does not.  It's based on evidence-based medicine (EBM), which applies quality, unbiased science acquired from authentic clinical trials to determine which treatment outcomes will likely occur.  This is necessary to restore the health of others as completely as possible.

Others have argued that EBM is too restrictive, which is another faulty argument.  Without EBM, what occurs is pointless diagnostic testing, and over-treatment, which may be not the best treatment if one does not take into consideration the safety, efficacy, and cost of treatment given to patients.  

Then other health care providers depend on medical guidelines for particular disease states when selecting treatment options for their patients.  As there are clinical trials that are biased, often medical guidelines are influenced by those who seek to increase their profit of their organization that provides products related to such disease states.  So medical guidelines are unreliable, and cloud the medical judgement of health care providers, compared with EBM.

With CER, an ideal example of the benefits from such research is demonstrated in what is called the ALLHAT trial, which was published about a decade ago.  This trial, mostly funded by the NIH, proved that, regarding medicinal treatment for hypertension, diuretics were the most benefical compared with newer, and expensive drugs.  Promotion by the makers of these expensive drugs did not allow the realization of the results of the ALLHAT trial.

CER needs to be realized in order for the appropriate treatment of those in need of medical intervention,

Dan Abshear