Story at a Glance:
As decisions always have pros and cons, making the correct one is often quite challenging. One framework, “expected value” (EV), solves this puzzle by calculating the relative probability of a good (positive) and bad (negative) outcome.
In medicine, while frameworks like EV should be used to guide medical policies and clinical decisions, they frequently are not, resulting in practices like mass COVID vaccination which have explicitly negative EVs being adopted and then held to regardless of public pushback or evidence to the contrary.
Much of this stems from our widespread societal faith that large randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the definitive arbiter of scientific truth, despite their numerous shortcomings. In contrast, valid and affordable approaches for determining scientific truth are continually marginalized, making it nearly impossible to “prove” competing therapies work or that sanctioned therapies have serious harms.
Much of this originated from two subjective linguistic interpretations which the FDA then used to prohibit the public’s access to life-changing (but non-commercializable) therapies like DMSO and protect its industry sponsors—which as DMSO stories in this article show, has created profound consequences that have been well-hidden from all of us.
This article will explore how this dysfunctional dynamic has harmed the health of America, meaningful changes that could preserve the vital functions of the FDA while simultaneously preventing it from sabotaging America’s health, and the changing political winds we’ve helped create which are gradually forcing those changes to happen.
