EBM

[huy.duong@ctsu.ox.ac.uk]

Dear anh Tuan and friends,

>	Oh yes, there is nothing wrong with the physiology-
>based teaching.

In other words:

Physiology, as far as we know it, should be taught, of course.
However, doctors must remember that we don't know everything.
We don't know all the initial conditions of a patient, we
don't know all the physiological processes, and we don't know
completely how differences in the initial conditions affect the 
outcome. Two patients with differences in the known and unknown
initial conditions, if given the same drug, will have outcomes
that differ to various degrees. But if, and only if, we don't 
know how it works, we say that the patients are the same
and that there is a random variation in the outcome. And we use 
statistics to get a picture of this random variation just like
any other random variation.

To disregard statistics when we don't know the mechanism is to act
like we know when we don't know. To use statistics based on random
variation when we know the mechanism is to act like we don't know 
when we do know. Both should be avoided.

Huy