Believing in Treatments that Don't Work

This article highlights the doctor mindset of advocating treatments that don't work. Of course there is also the patient side, in which patients would rather try unproven treatments for diseases which appeal to them instead of treatments which have much data to prove their efficacy. The other issue that can come up for physicians is trying to convince patients insistent on various treatments for various ailments that they don't need them...often times this discussion arises from misleading advertisements from big pharma...Regardless the author makes very important points in this article...
uvealblues
As Washington debates health care reform, emergency room physician Dr. David H. Newman explores how medical ideology often gets in the way of evidence-based medicine.
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The practice of medicine contains countless examples of elegant medical theories that belie the best available evidence.(read on)

Treatment based on ideology is alluring. Surgeries to repair the knee should work. A syrup to reduce cough should help. Calming the straining heart should save lives. But the uncomfortable truth is that many expensive, invasive interventions are of little or no benefit and cause potentially uncomfortable, costly, and dangerous side effects and complications.