"At least treatment x does not harm my patient." How often do clinicians think along these lines? In my field of complementary/ alternative medicine, it is arguably the most common reason for using this 01 that therapy: there is usually little "hard" evidence to suggest harm (by "harm" I mean a negative effect on the disease, not a simple adverse effect). So, if treatment x does not make the condition worse and the patient is keen to try it, we may well decide to condone its use. There is nothing wrong with such a decision-or is there?If reliable data are missing, how do we know treatment x does not worsen the condition? For one, we have our experience. Then there is the fact that this treatment may have been around for decades or even centuries.
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