Thanks for your comment and welcome to the blog.  I’m not a medical doctor.  I’m actually a graduate student studying acupuncture and traditional Asian medicine, and I’ve been an independent health and nutrition researcher for several years.

One need not be a medical doctor to analyze scientific studies and interpret their results.  In fact, the truth is that many doctors do not even read the research to learn about the drugs they are prescribing. Jerry Avorn, a Harvard Medical School professor and drug researcher is a leading authority on how physicians are educated about new drugs. He acknowledges that most physicians have only minimal knowledge about drug studies. Instead, Dr. Avorn has this to say about where most physicians get their knowledge about drugs:   

“Pharmaceutical marketing is about the most important source of knowledge about new drugs for most physicians, and a major form of continuing education as well.”

The majority of doctors learn about the drugs they prescribe from advertisements in medical journals and from promotional literature given to them by pharmaceutical sales reps.  Obviously these are both highly biased sources of information and cannot be relied on for objective, accurate information.  Unfortunately this is all too often the only source of information a doctor will see before making a prescription.

That is in fact one of the reasons I maintain this blog.  I think as patients we all have to take responsibility for our own health care and cannot rely exclusively on doctors to educate and inform us.  After all, they are only human and many of them simply do not have the time to stay abreast of the latest clinical research.

Chris