Presenting the Evidence

Yes. This sort of legislation could wipe out the chiropractic, homeopathic and "natural" frauds.

Homeopathic medicine is not a fraud. I don't know the statistics currently, but until recent years the majority of physicians in the world were homeopathic doctors and most hospitals were homeopathic hospitals.

Yes and no!!

"A majority of 800 Californians surveyed want doctors to have access to scientific evidence regarding the effectiveness of treatments." .............. Certainly a good idea in principal. The big issue is going to be what exactly do we mean by "access". We're talking about an enormous amount of information. Who will put this database together in a form that will be able to meet the goal? How will this be regarded with respect to "accepted medical practice" or whatever the malpractice lawyers call it? How can this possibly fit the situation of patients with unusual combinations of medical and physical conditions?

"They would support legislative measures requiring physicians to provide patients with a complete understanding of their treatment options." ............. Of course!! Your doctor spends 10 minutes in diagnosis and 60 minutes educating you, the patient or the patient's representative. Guess what? Your doctor visit just cost twice what it used to for the doctor's teaching time. Someone will pay for that. Oh, and by the way the doctor will print up a custom 65 page training manual for your specific health problem and require you to sign an agreement to read and study it before he'll write a prescription and give you a course of treatment. Then you'll likely take the "book" home and throw it into the same wastebasket that catches all the boilerplate that comes along with your bottle of pills from the pharmacy.

Government requirements for disclosure are pretty hard to do right. Have you ever bought a home in the USA? Remember the endless list of documents you had to sign most of which you didn't have time to read and likely wouldn't have understood anyway? Same deal. Of course you could hire a lawyer to accompany you to the doctor's office just like we had to do when we bought our first house in New Jersey 40 years ago. The lawyer knew about each document and told us it was OK to sign (every one of them). Do the still do that anywhere at real estate closings?

Which congressman will have the "wisdom of Solomon" to craft a law on medical disclosure? Anybody want to figure out how to clone Dr Dean Edell?

Ed Weldon