Resumen

RAMIS ANDALIA, Rina Milagros. Origin and intentionality of clinical epidemiology. Rev Cubana Salud Pública [online]. 2005, vol.31, n.3. ISSN 0864-3466.

Clinical epidemiology began to be known in the USA before 1958 through an elective course called "Principles of Epidemiology" or Clinical Epidemiology, which was taught to public health care and medical students from Yale University. It re-emerged in the second half of the 20th century, with different objectives, contents and technologies but with the same desire of differentiating from General Epidemiology. This re-emerging clinical epidemiology is also ideologically linked to evidence-based medicine (EBM) whose origin dates back, according to some authors, to the mid 19th century in France, and whose rebirth took place in the 20th century after the Clinical Epidemiology. It is pointed out that Clinical Epidemiology has a tendency of magnifying the results and transferring them to other populations as well as neopositivist and reductionist positions with respect to General Epidemiology, the clinics and the present scientific thinking within the universal context. The need of overcoming reductionism as a privileged methodological tool in the disciplinary science was underlined. In summary, it is recommended that one should not expect much more than what Clinical Epidemiology and Evidence-based medicine are able to provide us , and above all, one should not assume that the scientific experiment is the "golden standard" of the scientific research since scientific knowledge is not exclusive heritage of a particular type of neither research design nor scientific methodology

Palabras clave : epidemiology; clinical epidemiology; history; evidence-based medicine.

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