Conventional Medicine
That’s actually a great question, and it was originally posed, not by me, but by the journal BMJ Clinical Evidence.
They found that of about 2,500 treatments offered in conventional medicine:
- 13 percent are beneficial to the patient
- 23 percent are likely to be beneficial
- 8 percent is a trade-off between benefits and harm
- 6 percent are unlikely to be beneficial
- 4 percent are likely to be ineffective or harmful
- 46 percent have unknown effectiveness
States BMJ: “…the figures above suggest that the research community has a large task ahead and that most decisions about treatments still rest on the individual judgments of clinicians and patients.”
Through the years as a practitioner of strict conventional medicine, I often thought all the solutions to our problems were within our grasp in the realm of drug based medicine. I have come to realize the need for considering nutritional and environmental influences on disease ( which in the eyes of some fall outside the realm of “conventional medicine”) is never more important than now.
In summary there is a 64 percent chance that the treatment will either be harmful, will have unknown effects, or will be ineffective. A concerning conclusion for those who place their sole trust in the strongly drug based American medical system. Click on the link for the full article: BMJ Clinical Evidence.