What are the Human costs of EBM, the dominant paradigm in health care since 1990?
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| How many deaths from tetanus since this Cochrane article was published? | ||
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Every three minutes worldwide, a newborn child dies of tetanus. Source: UNICEF |
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.. Even though vaccination has dramatically decreased the burden of tetanus, there are still about one million cases per year globally. We found one controlled trial that examined whether 1 gram per day of intravenous vitamin C would help in the treatment of tetanus patients. Vitamin C was used alongside standard treatments for tetanus. Intravenous vitamin C reduced mortality of children aged between 1 and 12 with tetanus by 100% and mortality of 13 to 30 year old patients by 45%. The trial was not properly conducted and therefore great caution is required in the interpretation of the findings. Vitamin C cannot be recommended as a treatment for tetanus on the basis of this single study. Vitamin C for preventing and treating tetanus. Cochrane reviews, April 16. 2008. |
'… the requirements of the Cochrane database is that acceptable research must be based on the RCT design; all other research, which constitutes 98% of the literature, is deemed scientifically imperfect. … The philosophical work of Deleuze and Guattari proves to be useful in showing how health sciences are colonised (territorialised) by an all-encompassing scientific research paradigm – that of post-positivism – but also and foremost in showing the process by which a dominant ideology comes to exclude alternative forms of knowledge, therefore acting as a fascist structure. Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: truth, power and fascism - Int J Evid Based Healthc 2006; 4: 180–186 |
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If so-called evidence-based methods are so profoundly important in the march or Reason against superstition, why isn't there any evidence-based assessment of EBM itself, and what are we going to do about it? That question was repeatedly asked by so-called "critics of EBM". It takes only logic to realize that proponents of reason would wonder as well, if there wasn't such an hegemony of the EBM discourse in the inviolate territory of Science.


