Abstract

The advent of evidence-based medicine was a paradigm shift intended to provide a solid scientific foundation for medicine. The validity of this paradigm, however, depends on reliable data from clinical trials, mostly conducted by the pharmaceutical industry and reported in the names of senior academics. The release of previously confidential pharmaceutical industry documents into the public domain has given the medical community valuable insight into the degree to which industry-sponsored clinical trials are manipulated and misrepresented. Until this problem is corrected, evidence-based medicine is an illusion.