Friends of Science in Medicine: What's the Agenda?

The more research I do, the more amazed I am at the Agenda of "Friends of Doctors and Maintaining the Status Quo".

• They are a thinly disguised branch of a very shady reactionary group.  Most, if not all, the 'Executive' of FoSiM have garnered awards from "Australian Skeptics Inc". On the FoSiM website, Skeptics Inc are cited as the major funding body: hardly a propitious or unbiased source.  [More on A.S. Inc's machinations and their real politck.]

• Two of the Fundamental Tenets of the FoSiM Creed and Catechism, EBM and RCT (Evidence Based Medicine and Randomised Controlled Trials), are not only the cause of much debate within the Medical Community, but as more evidence arrives, look shakier and shakier
• Dr James Penston, author of authoritative books used as texts, i.e. "Stats.con: How We've Been Fooled by Statistics-Based Research in Medicine" (2011) and "Fiction and Fantasy In Medical Research: The Large Scale Randomised Trial" (2003) responded negatively in the BMJ to an article on FoSiM.
• "Evidence-Based Medicine or Ignorance-Based Evidence", a 2011 piece in an informed, expert Law Blog addresses this issue with two leaders in the field, Drs James Penston and Donald Miller, with "The Real World Failure of Evidence-Based Medicine". That the debate has escaped outside the Medical profession should be of real concern to die-hard proponents like FoSiM.
• Another response by Dr Penston in 2007, "The urge to sprinkle statistics is irresistible" raises more valid issues.
• From 2005, Dr Penston raises other serious concerns and issues wth: "Users' guide to detecting misleading claims in research: Misleading claims may be symptom of even more serious flaws". Dr Pentson introduces the notion that "Science" may not be as devoid of the effects of financial or other drivers are "purveyors of Good Science" may have us believe:
• Large scale randomised trials create the ideal conditions for data manipulation. Yet this is merely one of a multitude of problems stemming from a flawed method.
• To quote Dr Penston from the Lancet in 2003:
• History will judge the era of the large-scale randomised trial as a time when medical research went off the rails and indulged in flawed methodology which did little to improve the lives of patients.
  The scandal is, of course, that the data from these studies continue to be accepted and acted on by the medical profession.

• "Inconvenient Truths" are simply ignored or edited out by FoSiM. Would you expect less of these folk with their doctrinal attitude and blinkered views?
• In "Doctors, Nurses Often Use Holistic Medicine for Themselves", it is reported that in the USA around 25% more Healthcare Professionals than the general population (76% vs 63%). Should as the FoSiM stance implies, they all be drummed out of the Profession? Or do they know what they doing and actually look after themselves in the best possible ways?
   
• All the medicos on the FoSiM executive are well respected and highly accomplished doctors, researchers or science communicators, in their own fields. But none is expert in, nor has published in a respected 'high-quality' Journal on the validity of, EBM or RCT [not that I've found]. They are at best, "well meaning amateurs", not expert in a highly technical, very contentious and contested area of Statistics and Theory and Philosophy of Science. That they haven't provided reasoned, comprehensive rebuttals of Drs. Penston and Millers' work is proof of this. That they don't even cite this debate, stretching back at least a decade suggests to me either a lack of intellectual rigour or research, wilful ignorance or a disregard of more "inconvenient truths". None of these options "covers them in glory" or supports their arguments.

• Fundamentals are ignored by FoSiM:
• "Show us the Data!" FoSiM are violently and implacably opposed to "CAM" (presumably Complementary and Alternative Medicines), roundly criticise and vilify therapies they do not approve of and loudly call for all Alternative Medicine/Therapies to be justify themselves with EBM and RCT, so beloved by FoSiM. Only no data are provided to suggest this is warranted, only opinion and non-peer reviewed articles. Compared to Establishment Medical and Hospital practice and outcomes, are alternative methods etc unsafe enough to be called into question? No data, no case...
   
• This is an argument first and foremost about Patient Safety, then Quality of Care and lastly about Effacy of treatment, therapies, medicines. But there is no definitive data for the outcomes of Establishment Medicine, despite them consuming consuming 10-15% of National GDP in mature, western economies to use as a baseline in discussing Effacy:
   
• The only estimates of Medical and Hospital avoidable fatalities and Adverse Events (serious Injury), are horrifyingly high (4500 deaths/yr in Australia). The real problem is the non-collection of hard-data but that there is no outcry within the Profession to correct this. If FoSiM were interested in better Healthcare and better Patient Outcomes, this would be on top of their list.
• Despite the 550+ page report of the 2005 Queensland Public Hospital Commission of Inquiry, where's the evidence of change in Queensland Health? Or any real transparency or hard-data recording and reporting?
• Could "Dr Death" of Bundaberg be repeating, right now? Absolutely, and without being reported, actioned or with any personal consequences to those involved.
• The Medical Error Action Group keeps collecting and reporting new deaths from the same causes. In Engineering or Aviation, this systemic failure of the Profession and its Professionals would not only not be tolerated, but those repeating, or allowing, Known Errors, Faults and Failures would be ejected from the profession and would face criminal charges. The folks who designed the World Trade Centre were not charged because they took into account all known failure modes in the early 1960's. Any Engineer who, since 2001, designs a tall building that is not survivable from large jet aircraft impact, would be criminally liable.
   
• Science is not Practice. Substantially more than a few studies is needed to convert some Theory or data into reliable, repeatable Real World Practice. We know this, because it is being done intentionally and deliberately by at least one significant Healthcare System in the world, Intermountain Healthcare, Utah. Dr Brent James has spoken and written extensively about their work and results. As well, he and his team have published many papers on their results (using Real World hard-data) in peer-reviewed Journals. This is not idle speculation, assertion nor dogmatic belief. In Australia, we've know publicly about this since the ABC's Health Report interviewed Dr James in 2001: "Minimising Harm to Patients in Hospital".  A 2009 New York Times Story, "Making Health Care Better", about Dr James and Intermountain highlights their systemic and systematic approach, and that it needs constant attention and work. A letter to an under-performing Obstetrician by Dr Ware Branch, head of the Quality Committee, is quoted.
  • “You are perfectly right to question the data,” Branch wrote. “We have been found incorrect in numerous cases.” But for all its politeness, Branch’s letter was also pointed. With it, he attached a list of every elective induction the obstetrician had done recently and invited him to identify any that had been incorrectly classified. Branch also enclosed statistical profiles of other, similarly busy obstetricians. They performed fewer C-sections and had shorter delivery times. The letter’s final section included the following:
    “Lastly, quality improvement is a process, not an event. In part it works by finding variation and drawing attention to it, as has happened with you and others in this effort. And well-done quality improvement is not punitive; it’s educational. It is also worth noting that those docs determined not to learn, never do.” [my italics]
  
  I can't imagine any hospital I know in Australia either writing to that Obstetrician in the first place, nor responding to them in this way. Shouldn't this be what the FoSiM should be advocating for? Real, Enduring Change?

• There is a well-known, perfect model for how to create an Industry-wide Quality and Safety Culture, in one of the most cut-throat profit-driven businesses ever: Aviation.
  A recent piece in The Journal of Patient Safety, "An NTSB for Healthcare, Learning from Innovation: Debate and Innovate or Capitulate"  by both experienced, highly-competent Aviators and Medicos makes a very strong case for in both describing the systemic problems (the figures on waste, fraud and over-servicing are horrifying) and for outlining a solution:
• Adopt what is known to work in Aviation, and
  has been proven to be Cheaper, Safer and Better on every metric for coming up to 2 decades by Intermountain Healthcare with their "Do it Right, First Time" Quality approach.
• Isn't it odd that the self-appointed, self-proclaimed "experts in all things Medical", the FoSiM, haven't suggested this approach nor flagged that our Hospitals and Medical system are far from World's Best Practice.
• Instead of seeking to improve their own failed Profession, they are seeking to attack and discredit "The Competition", or at least those that they can identify and target.