BMJ  2004;328:350 (7 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7435.350-c

Letter

Cure is better than prevention

The first 100% of the full text of this article appears below.

EDITOR—Prevention may not be better than cure.1

Karl Popper, having fled from philistine philosophy, has already said: "In the realm of errors, cure is better than prevention."2

Overenthusiastic scientists, politicians, and so on, tend to forget that the realm of error in which we live is large. Prevention is permissible only in well understood and controllable conditions.

Jules Schagen van Leeuwen, gynaecologist

St Antonius Hospital, 3435 EM Nieuwegein, Netherlands jsvleeuw@knmg.nl

Competing interests: None declared.

  1. Loefler I. Prevention is better than cure. BMJ 2004;328: 115. (10 January.)[Free Full Text]
  2. Miller D, ed. Popper selections. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985: 10.

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