RT Book, Section
A1 Bigelow, Robert
A2 Lopes, Renato D.
A2 Harrington, Robert A.
SR Print(0)
ID 57835465
T1 Chapter 5. Introduction to Clinical Experimentation
T2 Understanding Clinical Research
YR 2013
FD 2013
PB The McGraw-Hill Companies
PP New York, NY
SN 978-0-07-174678-6
LK accessbiomedicalscience.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=57835465
RD 2024/04/20
AB The  practice  of  medicine  is  an  art,  performed  for  the  healing  and  reduction  in  suffering  of  individual  patients.  Doctors  practice  their  art  through  skilled  application  of  available  medical  knowledge.  Before  the  scientific  and  technological  advances  made  in  the  last  century,  medical  knowledge  belonged  to  a  select  few  and  was  passed  from  teachers  to  students  as  if  from  parents  to  children  (see  the  first  point  in  the  Hippocratic  Oath)  (1).  Although  much  had  been  learned  through  careful  observation  of  human  anatomy  and  disease,  empirical  evidence  on  prognoses  and  treatment  outcomes  was  limited.  Rational  treatment  decisions  could  be  made  deductively  or  on  the  basis  of  accepted  beliefs;  however,  the  inability  to  obtain  extensive  empirical  evidence  left  the  value  of  many  treatments  unproven  and  poorly  understood.