Ethics and Evidence-Based Medicine: Fallibility and Responsibility in Clinical Science

Abstract

There can be few better illustrations of why the term ‘evidence-based medicine’ is misleading than the title of Kenneth W Goodman's (no relation) thought-provoking book. The question has been asked many times, but what other sort of medicine is there? Medicine that is intentionally divorced from evidence is unworthy even of ethical consideration. It is the subtitle of the book that is the author's real subject—fallibility and responsibility in clinical science—though even that is wrongly phrased. Had the title been ‘The Ethics of Uncertainty in Clinical Medicine’, I would have started reading with less prejudice.