Trumping the Evidence - The Donald Denies Asbestos Related Disease, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy but Asserted Vaccines Cause Autism

One of the main causes of health care dysfunction identified by demoralized health care professionals in our 2003 qualitative study was threats to evidence-based medicine, and by extension, evidence-based public health and health policy.(1) Since then, we have frequently discussed threats such asmanipulation andsuppression of clinical research to further vested interests, and distortion of research dissemination, such asghost written articles, often enabled byindividual andinstitutional conflicts of interest.These and other causes of health care dysfunction which we discuss, however, have hardly been the stuff of political debates. In particular, US presidential campaigns often feature very bland discussions of health care, when they feature them at all. These discussions, furthermore, usually are limited to health insurance, but rarely challenge the unusual American system which relies on for-profit health care insurance.SoHealth Care Renewal usually does not provide much content relevant to political campaigns.The 2016 presidential election season has not been usual. True, one campaign, that of Hillary Clinton, has featured the detailed, but relatively bland policy points that we usually see.Her opponent, Donald Trump, is very different. He is known for wide ranging unscripted comments. In particular (barely) reported instances, his comments have included apparent attacks on the clinical or public health research evidence base. (I used the word " appearent " since nothing M...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Management Tags: asbestos Donald Trump evidence-based medicine health policy public health Source Type: blogs