Following this revelation, a British research team reported a clinical trial that they had carried out more than a decade earlier. Their study had found a higher death rate among patients receiving a new anti arrhythmic drug than among those receiving a placebo.

Principles of evidence based medicine have transformed the way we look at clinical interventions and may prevent repetitions of public health disasters such as the inappropriate promotion of hormone replacement therapy and anti arrhythmic drugs. Application of these principles to health policy can lead to wiser decisions about how to run our health systems.

For example, anti arrhythmic drugs were prescribed widely with the United States Food and Drug Administration s approval to heart attack victims for more than a decade, under the assumption that reducing heart rhythm abnormalities would decrease mortality rates. But, as the investigative journalist Thomas J. Moore reported in his book Deadly Medicine, at the peak of their use, these drugs were killing more Americans each year than were killed during the entire Vietnam War.