Is your doctor really equipped to help you make life-or-death decisions?

I came across a new survey recently and I thought the results were interesting — especially on the heels of this week’s vaccine discussion.

Evidently, researchers at University of Maryland Medical Center found that most medical residents and attending physicians aren’t quite aware of the true risks and benefits of common medical interventions.

Their survey featured 18 questions. Ten of them were designed to gauge overall understanding of the benefits and harms of popular procedures and treatments. The rest measured the confidence these doctors had in their responses.

And wouldn’t you know — results showed that doctors overestimated benefits nearly 80 percent of the time.

Crazy, isn’t it? Although I’m hardly surprised that trends leaned toward overestimating benefits. The medical establishment churns out little lemmings these days, many of whom are content to spit out Big Pharma’s dogma like it was the gospel.

But perhaps the bigger story here is the doctors’ lack of confidence in their own responses — with most rating only a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10. Not to mention the fact that they also underestimated the rate at which a given treatment would have any effect at all.

In other words, doctors are prescribing interventions — often rife with side effects — without the first clue as to whether they’ll even be effective. They’re just throwing “solutions” at a wall in the hopes that something sticks.

For example, one of the questions asked how often cancer is diagnosed from positive screening mammograms. The correct answer is 1 to 4.9 percent of the time — but most of the doctors guessed much higher, answering between 10 and 20 percent of the time.

A pretty gross overestimation of the value of mammography, no?

And it’s not just mammography that’s causing confusion, either. In fact, it seems that most physicians believe cancer screening tests save lives simply because they increase detection rates. Needless to say, the joke is on them. (And, sadly, on patients who are duped by this convenient sound bite doled out ad nauseam by the mainstream cancer industry.)

And then there’s all of the hype about osteoporosis. A disease that, while not exactly made up, is beyond absurd in its expectation that a 70 year old woman should have the bone density of a 20 year old. And of course, that she should take medications that are extraordinarily toxic in order to maintain this bizarre standard.

Here’s a glaring example of the mainstream’s misguided approach to osteoporosis treatment, straight from this new survey: Only three out of 108 doctors accurately responded that Fosamax prevents hip fractures less than one percent of the time.

Meanwhile, six of these doctors — that’s twice as many — erroneously responded that Fosamax’s long-term fracture prevention rate was as high as 70 percent. Need I say more?

Bear in mind that these are all very standard medical interventions that we simply take for granted. And ones that doctors are practically forced into recommending, lest they be labeled as negligent or crazy, respectively.

This is exactly what happens when we become too dependent upon so-called “evidence-based” medicine — that is, the kind of medicine based on study results handed down from the same companies that sponsored those studies.

Instead of getting an accurate picture of what a medication can — and can’t — do, doctors are told only what the drug company want them to hear.

No nuance. No interpretation. And very little in the way of critical judgment.

Maybe I’m the only one who thinks this should be front page news. But your doctors are supposed to be offering you reliable professional guidance in making what are often life-or-death decisions. If they’re not as informed as their patients think they are, I’d say that’s something worth knowing.

 

Source: 

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/868079


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