Medical Ethicist Dr. Steven D. Pearson says definitely not.
Pearson’s opinions help shape policies that become written into law. His mission: To reduce variation in physician behavior. He believes medical care will be better, safer, and more cost-efficient when physicians base clinical judgments on “solid empirical science instead of clinical observation and experience.”
Dr. Pearson’s word choice is key to understanding where he’s coming from—and how your doctor may be required to treat you at your next appointment. Notice, Pearson uses the term “instead of” as if suggesting solid empirical science and personal experience are mutually exclusive and cannot be reconciled. His assumption seems to be that the average physician is incapable of safely assimilating new experiences.
Conformity is Safety
According to Dr. Pearson, all doctors should treat people with the same diagnosis—say high cholesterol, or cancer—the same way, and their treatment plans should be based entirely on published protocols and guidelines. He suggests doctors rely not on their own experience, but on “solid empirical science.” He claims that individuals are not capable of generating, evaluating, or implementing “solid empirical science” and that only consensus panels and groups of experts can create “solid empirical science.” Furthermore, he characterizes behavior of those doctors who prefer to interpret data themselves rather than accept the interpretation of consensus panels, as “deviant.”
Finally, Dr. Pearson acknowledges that consensus panels are frequently comprised of doctors on pharmaceutical company payrolls and this conflict of interest might present problems. Nevertheless, he characterizes currently available guidelines as “solid.”
Consensus is Truth
Dr. Pearson supported provisions in the new healthcare reform bill that will fund “physician variation” studies to single out doctors who are deviating from expert group opinions more than others.
If you are the kind of person who wants to see an independently minded physician who treats you as an individual rather than a disease state to be fitted into a predetermined algorithm, you might not like the direction medicine will be headed if people like Dr. Pearson have their way. On the other hand, maybe you would rather your doctor concern himself more with what disease category or categories to place you in, and endeavor to adhere closely to guidelines and algorithms as possible.
If you’ve read this site or any of my books, you know what side I’m on. However, maybe the Robot-doctor is what this country really needs. I want to know what you think. Send me your comments and tell me whether, the next time you or your child gets sick, you’d rather make an appointment with a Robot-Doctor, or the old-fashioned kind—the one encouraged to think for herself. Please post your comments!
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I cannot believe that big-pharm hires these “medical ethicists” to try to rationalize their campaign to get doctors to prescribe more and more drugs! I know she didn’t say that, but in my opinion, that’s probably what’s going on.
My relationship with my doctor is based on trust. And I trust that he’ll tell me what he believes is the best course of action, whether or not some algorithm tells him to do something different. I trust that he’s aware of the algorithm and has considered it before advising me.
What’s next? Before you know it, they’ll be bribing doctors to prescribe more of the drugs they tell them to, or cut their pay whenever their “deviant.” This all makes me so angry!
I don’t know who this guy thinks he is, but maybe he could look up the root for the word “ethicist”, which is from the greek, ethikos. I forget what it means, but I know for sure that it definitely don’t mean selling your educaition to the highest bidder! THINK FOR YOURSELVES EVERYBODY!!! DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH!!!
P.S. MY GRANDPA’S A DOCTOR AND IF HE WAS STILL ALIVE HE WOULD HATE THIS GUY!
We can thank the NIH and their new training grants for this attitude. Under the mantra of “bench to bedside”, the NIH funds med schools now through grants, not for interns/residents but for research: an NIH-funded Clinical and Translational Science Institute should be popping up near you if one hasn’t already. These beasts are massive, requiring inter-institutional cooperation, in addition to bringing together “public-private partnerships” and … voila… patents and patients. At an opening of one of these centers, I heard that now everybody in my state would be a potential candidate for a clinical trial.