 |
Fundación Salud, Innovación y Sociedad "Contribuimos a la formación de opinión independiente" |
|
| Inicio > actividades > entrevistas > entrevista_1.htm | suscriptores | |
Portada 
|
 | Dr. Ian Chalmers (en inglés) Director Cochrane Centre (Oxford, UK). |
1. What was your personal relationship with Dr. Cochrane? How did you came across his professional contribution?
A friend of mine, called David Baton, was thinking about his going for training at the London School of Hygiene; and I was thinking about where I would going get training in mental health. He encouraged me to go to the London School of Hygiene at the time he was working with Archie Cochrane, so he introduced me to Archie Cochrane. I met him briefly in, I guess it must be in 1972. At the time, he gave me his book to read, "Effectiveness and Efficiency", and that book changed my life. Because before then I didn't know how to judge whether the opinions of doctors could be trusted or not; because I had some experience which suggested to me that you couldn't trust everybody's opinion. Archie Cochrane pointed that there were unvoiced research methods which would help to identify which opinions should be trusted and which shouldn't. So it had a very big effect on me by 1972 1973.
2. What do you underline as the outstanding contribution from Dr. Cochrane to the contemporary Health Services Research and medical care? Do you think fair talking about "before" and "after" Cochrane's legacy?
I think that Cochrane was important because he wrote this little book which doesn't take long time to read. And he wrote it in a very engaging style, it's like if he is talking to you. The message was very very simple. He said: after we have a proper health service we don't know what the effects of what we are doing on the health service are. And that's a very simple and revolutionary message. That's I think why was so important: it wasn't because other people would not were aware of that message. It was the key who did so well in that book that he introduced the whole of the people to the concept. I'm told that he wasn't a very good speaker, I didn't hear him speak at all so I'm not sure about that, but his book is fantastic. He was a very good writer, then? Yes, He was a very good writer. Yes, certainly He was.
3. Do you have personal links with Spain? What do you think about the initiative to organize this sort of commemoration?
First of all, I really appreciate this initiative to organize this sort of commemoration tomorrow, and I was saying just a little bit earlier that you put wheels, which was Archie Cochrane's adoptive country, you put wheels to shame, because Wales has never done anything like Spain Catalonia and have done organising such day. So I greatly appreciate that.
4. Which dimension of Dr. Cochrane's legacy do you think is still "politically incorrect" as regards the "conventional health policy wisdom"?
If anything has become politically more correct, that's a danger in that. Because he wouldn't though, he wouldn't wanted to be remembered for politically correctness. In fact, he was always asking people to think about what they were doing. So, I imagine that if he was here now he would be telling us that we were doing something wrong. In spite of we were implementing his message of thirty years ago but know there is a place for a new message. So we would have to listen what he has to say, what's the new message, so we should never be complacent about that.
5. My last question is about your contribution to the challenging introduction of lay interest and values into clinical trails and systematic reviews: what are -according your experience- the main uses made by the health service users of such innovative development?
The most experience I have is of lay involvement in the field of pregnancy in childhood, which as you know is not a disease. You're not ill being pregnant. And so that means that the reaction of a pregnant women in our country to approvement obstetric techniques was quite strong in the 1970's in particular. So they started to tell obstetricians what they should be doing and prefer to research evidence rather than telling obstetricians. And obstetricians got very angry about that and they called our group. The "lay people" were very very influential in making obstetriciants, and their rights as well, pay attention to research evidence in control traps. I believe that it is very very important that lay people continue to be involved not just in pregnancy but all across health care because all of the rest of us have what we call rested interests. There are ones who are paid to work in health services, the health economists are paid to do health economics... but patients should be most interested in what the evidence is about. I think that this century is bringing a big challenge to find out whether is possible to get lay people to set some of the research questions. That should be adressed by the researchers rather than by academics or by the industry.
