The Cochrane Collaboration

"The Cochrane Collaboration is an international network of more than 37,000 dedicated contributors from over 130 countries, working together to prepare, update, and promote Cochrane Reviews. Cochrane Reviews provide evidence based advice to help health care practitioners and patients make well informed decisions about health care.

The Cochrane Collaboration’s work is internationally recognised as the benchmark for high quality information about the effectiveness of health care." (Australian Government National Health and Medical Research Council website)

Medicine is filled with misinformation and poor treatment choices. The best medical journals have reviewed their distant past articles and found that a high percentage of conclusions have later been shown to be wrong. One of the major problems is bias. Authors are often funded by drug and equipment companies. Their future research support is dependent on how much the supporting companies like their work. Specialists often make their livelihood on a particular procedure such as surgery, endoscopy, mammography. When they write and teach about this procedure they have an enormous bias but they are the "experts" whose teaching on the subject is studied and followed by physicians and patients.

The Cochrane Collaboration was created in the early 1990's to have impartial non-funded reviews of important medical topics. It's recognized as the gold standard for evaluation of medical issues. Unfortunately few physicians or patients use this free internet resource; most don't even know of its existence. Check out their website and make use of its search engine when you have a medical topic you want to pursue. http://www.cochranelibrary.com