There is evidence that children who are unaware of their life-threatening diagnoses do not experience any less distress and anxiety than those who are told, and in some cases they may actually experience more.
The picture that emerges from study of physician economic behavior is mixed, but from the intensity of responses by some professional societies to Medicare's coding modifier proposal, it appears that economic incentives matter a lot to many of their members.
Industrialized nations could benefit from strategies emerging in developing nations such as respectful collaboration between traditional out-of-hospital birthing practices and maternity units in partnering hospitals.
This process of developing EBM-based guidelines and applying them to clinical care highlights the tension between generating unbiased knowledge based on statistical aggregation and the application of this information to individual patients.