PEDIATRICS Vol. 85 No. 3 March 1990, pp. 366-369
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A Belated Randomized Control Trial

THOMAS C. CHALMERS MD1

1 Harvard School of Public Health and Boston Veterans Administration Medical Center, Boston, MA, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY

When medical scientists and/or practitioners are asked to comment on an article that may have already created a controversy of both a scientific and ethical nature in the public press, the temptation is irresistible to abandon the language of scientific articles and to call a spade a spade. I bow to that irresistible temptation. A plague on all houses except those who reported and conducted the study in this issue of Pediatrics.1

When the study in question was designed and executed (1985 to 1988), an extremely difficult situation had been created by others. An elaborate, expensive, and potentially both effective and dangerous new technology had been allowed to proliferate without the gathering of reliable information about its relative efficacy and safety.