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There's a few things that are problematic about this opinion piece. First off, many of the items being discussed are related to surgical treatments. It is ver

There's a few things that are problematic about this opinion piece. First off, many of the items being discussed are related to surgical treatments. It is very hard to impossible to do a double blind study of a surgical thing. What are you going to do? Open a bunch of people up and only do the actual treatment on half of them? I've heard of this being done in very rare situations, but the ethics of this are pretty edgy. Secondly, there appears to be a mischaracterization of women being disproportionately affected by things. This is a pretty complex topic, but lets balance out the offered information by pointing out that prostate cancer (men) kills more people than breast cancer (women) and receives a lot less funding https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/02/prostate-cancer-kills-people-breast-cancer-first-time-new-figures/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/02/prostate-cancer-... My personal experience with FDA regulation has been that they are being asked to do an impossible task, and not doing a great job of it. People close to me have been hugely (negatively) impacted by FDA decisions because they are going for a one size fits all solution for everything, and because they somehow fancy that they know more than doctors involved in a particular situation.

anon1m0us 8y ago
Doctors are biased too, that's the problem. Often times, knowing a lot about something will bias you even more because you fail to acknowledge or accept what you do NOT know or what conflicts with what you THINK you know.
- tomohawk 8y ago
  Everybody's biased, and I've certainly met my share of biased doctors. If you have a specific complaint, each doctor brings their toolbag of golden hammers that they know about and rarely has the ability to look beyond it. It's one of the challenges of being a patient to wade through that. The FDA isn't really going to be very helpful with this, and they labor under the additional burden of being much more subject to politics. Sure, they may stop the obvious quackery, but remember that general anesthesia used to be considered quackery, as did prescribing antibiotics for stomach ulcers.

anon1m0us 8y ago

Doctors are biased too, that's the problem. Often times, knowing a lot about something will bias you even more because you fail to acknowledge or accept what you do NOT know or what conflicts with what you THINK you know.

tomohawk 8y ago
Everybody's biased, and I've certainly met my share of biased doctors. If you have a specific complaint, each doctor brings their toolbag of golden hammers that they know about and rarely has the ability to look beyond it. It's one of the challenges of being a patient to wade through that. The FDA isn't really going to be very helpful with this, and they labor under the additional burden of being much more subject to politics. Sure, they may stop the obvious quackery, but remember that general anesthesia used to be considered quackery, as did prescribing antibiotics for stomach ulcers.