ME/CFS Skeptic
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Thought this was an interesting editorial. It's from 2004 but is still relevant.
Source: http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC351829&blobtype=pdf
The history of medicine is replete with examples of treatments once common practice but now known not to work—or worse, cause harm. Only because the French surgeon Paré ran out of boiling oil did he discover that not cauterising gun shot wounds with it created much less pain and suffering.w2 Leeches and blood letting were used for thousands of years for almost everything. Attempts to show that they were ineffective were resisted with great passion by the medical profession.w3 More recently, we have had treatment with insulin for schizophrenia and vitamin K for myocardial infarction.1 2 In case we are all feeling too smug about silliness in the bad old days, we have the recent crisis on finding that hormone replacement therapy does not prevent cardiovascular disease.3 Why do we still use ineffective treatments?
Source: http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC351829&blobtype=pdf