Professor Leemon McHenry (Philosophy, California State University, Northridge / IASH Fellow): The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine
Abstract
We live in an age alleged devoted to evidence-based medicine. Evidence-based medicine however depends on reliable data and if the data are largely manipulated by the manufacturers of pharmaceuticals, then the data are not reliable. Evidence-based medicine is an illusion.
This lecture raises and attempts to answer the following questions: What are the ways in which the profit motive of industry undermines the integrity of science? How is science protected from corporate malfeasance in a capitalist economy? I argue that medicine desperately needs to re-evaluate its relationship with the pharmaceutical industry and re-affirm the ideal of evidence-based medicine. Karl Popper’s philosophy of science provides a rigorous conception of science required to preserve the integrity of the scientific basis of medicine against the commercial influences.
[IASH Work in Progress talk]