[Evidence-based health care--critical inquiries from the medical ethics background]

Abstract

Evidence-based medicine already plays an important role in clinical practice and in allocation decisions in health care. It is therefore of particular importance to acknowledge the ethical as well as the conceptual, methodological, epistemological and practical objections that have been articulated. A comprehensive medico-ethical evaluation of many of these caveats can be undertaken only in the context of a concrete health care system. The EU-sponsored EVIBASE project deals with these very issues. However, it is up to evidence-based medicine to prove it can comply with its own standards and counter the skeptical or critical arguments.