"Ugh. You know, it’s bad enough that insurance companies are already wasting money paying for quack treatments like chiropractic “adjustments” and acupuncture, but this isn’t just the camel’s nose under the tent–it’s the camel in the tent, spitting and defecating over everything."

while superficially cleaver, betrays a superficial, biased and outdated knowledge of the scientific literature for both chiropractic and acupuncture. There are many good studies available that demonstrate the efficacy of both.

The journal Spine, a premier medical journal, reported in 2003, A Randomized Controlled Study Comparing Medication, Acupuncture, and Spinal Manipulation, that chiropractic adjustments provided the best overall results and better short term results than either acupuncture or meds (i.e. Vioxx, Celebrex, etc.). However, acupuncture did appear to be more effacaious for neck pain as rated on a Visual Analog Scale.

No one is opposed to EBM. Republicans have explicitly opposed cost effectiveness research. It is not done a lot because there is no clear funding source. Drug companies oppose it. It does show up in the medical literature at least indirectly. Studies with diabetics and hypertensives have shown that older cheaper drugs work just as well for some patients and/or are safer.

Steve

Also I have never seen simba(thats good *** weed) heal any one no matter how good it is, but I have seen it improve their spirits and apatite.

So your against medical marijuana now Alex?

I just heard an NPR article on the latest move in this game: the name brand companies are giving coupons to doctors equivalent to their patients co-pay and the doctors pass it on to their patients. I may not have the numbers exactly right, but the example they gave was something like generic drug, $120 cost/$10 co-pay, name brand $540 cost/$145 co-pay. The name brand pitched in with a $135 coupon, and the consumer, who preferred the name brands once-a-day pill versus the generic's twice a day, went with the name brand, which put the insurer out an extra $400+ dollars. This effectively takes the consumer back out.

This stuff is complicated and I don't tend to spend a whole lot of time listening to anyone who starts off the discussion with "Everyone knows" or has the attitude of "those who disagree with me are idiots". I'm not accusing anyone here, in fact this is one of the more reasoned sites around.

Evidence-based medicine is a component of the moderate Republican alternative plan, the Medical Rights and Reform Act.

Where can I see a copy of the "Medical Rights and Reform Act"? Is this the one they announced today?

It needs to be said that the idea of evidence based medicine

I don't follow what the Republican leadership supports or doesn't support but I think you may be confusing evidence-based medicine with comparative effectiveness which are two different things (if comparative effectiveness is anything at all—it's pretty much in its infancy).

For one thing it would be unethical to do so. Think about open heart surgery or amputating a limb.

And lots of pharmaceutical use is off-label, as much as 20%. That means that the pharmaceutical doesn't have proven efficacy for the condition for which it's being prescribed. Nonetheless, we're still reimbursing the physicians for prescribing them.

Whether it is prayer healings, or a 20% discount off all taxi rides to a Christian Science reading room, or free movie tickets, it's bound to be cheaper than doctor visits.

And usually, a patient gets better on their own anyway.

Consider this moral quandry: if God chooses to not intervene because He doesn't want to be discovered that way, it means that He's willing to let someone die to prevent assured knowledge of His existence.

But if He's there, death for some loses its sting ;-)

Not so simple, this provable God stuff.

Double-blind tests of prayer for others seems bizarre to me. Do the tests rest on the idea that God is mechanistic, and can't see what the survey is up to? That God is dumb? Do they assume that He is just waiting to be discovered? Weird.

Consider this moral quandry: if God chooses to not intervene because He doesn't want to be discovered that way, it means that He's willing to let someone die to prevent assured knowledge of His existence.

Double-blind tests of prayer for others seems bizarre to me. Do the tests rest on the idea that God is mechanistic, and can't see what the survey is up to? That God is dumb? Do they assume that He is just waiting to be discovered? Weird.