A recent review published online at the Journal of the American Medical Association found that many commonly employed medical procedures applied to millions of people each year are founded on questionable evidence, at best. In some instances, the evidence to support the treatment may not even exist.

According to the research, medical overuse “encompasses overdiagnosis, which occurs when ‘individuals are diagnosed with conditions that will never cause symptoms,’ and overtreatment, which is treatment targeting overdiagnosed disease or from which there is minimal or no benefit.”

To be clear, a treatment performed when the risks and benefits are not clearly defined, is a treatment performed under false pretenses – and a violation of proper conduct as regards the principle of informed consent. For example, many women were given mastectomies, lumpectomies and other cancer treatments for harmless epithelial growths that even the National Cancer Institute admits should never have been called carcinomas in the first place. Most of these women would not have even undergone these costly procedures had they been told that the growth was harmless.

However, in today’s medical world, this kind of phenomenon happens all too often. Currently, the market drives treatment options rather than actual science. Unfortunately, the industry corruption is so severe that many thousands of people, or more, are essentially coerced into receiving potentially harmful medical treatments and procedures they don’t need.

Source:

GreenMedInfo.com