Doctor 10%: just one in 10 treatments works
Only one in 10 of the drugs and treatments your doctor prescribes has solid proof it will work—and 20 percent of medicine may not work at all, with very poor evidence that it is effective.
Applying the most exacting of measures, researchers from Oxford University have discovered that most of medicine is supported by only moderate to poor evidence, which throws into question the vast sums invested in healthcare around the world every year—the US spends $3.6 trillion and the UK £197 billion, for example.
Just 10 percent of the scientific papers the researchers reviewed met the criteria of an evaluation system known as GRADE (grading of recommendations, assessment, development and evaluation), while 37 percent had “moderate”evidence they could work, 31 percent had “low” evidence, and 22 percent had“very low-quality” evidence—and yet all are treatments or drugs that are used daily by doctors.1
Even of the 15 studies that met the criteria, only two
