We don’t like to get political here. In fact, as we view it, politics has its place to help improve health care and bring all of us together, regardless of party affiliation.
But we had to speak out when we learned about the list of banned words issued recently and that it includes “evidence-based” as one of the seven forbidden words that the current Administration instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to avoid.
Everything in medicine over the last 20 years has moved to an evidence-based approach – as it should. Evidence is a good thing. When we are wise with our resources, we only treat patients with things we know are going to work.
Because we have evidence that they will.
For a presidential administration to forbid that the CDC use words like evidence-based is just ludicrous. And infuriating.
Any physician, any health care administrator, any patient for goodness sake, any person regardless of political preference, must agree that it’s absurd to ban words that promote sound research and proven trials to describe medical treatments.
Why wouldn’t we want evidence-based research to guide our medical decisions and actions?
In the Annals of Internal Medicine, an impressive conglomerate of authors declared in this article that if the White House did in fact ban words like “evidence-based” from use, the action “carries the risk of jeopardizing the work of U.S. government-funded health care practitioners and professional organizations.”
Jeopardizing, yes. Not only the work of dedicated medical and health professionals, but banning an evidence-heavy perspective on care puts our collective health in jeopardy.
