Why is evidence-based medicine important?

I’m sure readers of the Evidence-Based Medicine journal have a variety of reasons for subscribing. But most of you would assume evidence-based medicine (EBM) is important to clinicians. Recently Olive Goddard (the manager at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in Oxford) forwarded this question to the Evidence-Based Health Care list: "Could you please tell me why EBM is important? Can a physician practice medicine without knowing EBM?" The email list has over a thousand subscribers and many had an opinion about this question. I will abbreviate these to highlight some of the threads, but you can read the full text on the list.