How a remarkable trial on bedrest during the Korean war helped lead to evidence-based medicine

By Helen Pearson, Honorary Professor of Practice, Department of Science and Technology Studies, UCL

In 1959, a young doctor named David Sackett stumbled on a clinical trial that would change his life – and most of ours. The study showed that conventional wisdom on bed rest in medicine was wrong. And it helped lead Sackett and others to develop evidence-based medicine, in which doctors today make decisions based on rigorous scientific research.

It was a necessary corrective. The history of medicine is littered with practices once assumed to…

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