[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Sign-in] [Mail] [Setup] [Help]
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
|
Health See other Health Articles Title: How Can I Trust Dr. Google? Today we are balanced precariously on the heady cusp of the third great revolution in medicine: the biomolecular revolution. The first era of medicine involved painfully scouring the plant kingdom in search of herbs that might scare away dreaded diseases. “Hmmm… leaf of yellow Sabu flowerpecker fix Saber tooth abscess?” But as one country doctor who founded the Mayo clinic stated, “The only two things in my black bag that I know work for sure are morphine and my saw.” The second great era began around WWII, the era of antibiotics, vaccines and, of course, family-pack Snickers bars. The fact that these actually worked to make people feel better made doctors look like they could fix stuff and were responsible for elevating us from barber surgeons to our current lofty status, that of golfers. But now, on the cusp of the third great revolution, medicine today is changing so rapidly that there have been more advances in medicine in the past six months than in the past 6,000 years. We have moved into a new age — from agricultural to industrial, to information and now to the bio-intelligence age where no longer is an advancing technology just an advancing technology but rather an explosion of intersections of different technologies. A cell phone, for example, isn’t just an advanced phone but rather it is a camera, a stereo, an alarm clock, an entertainment system and an app store where, depending on your mood, you can change the weather to extra sunny or launch ICBMs. A car is also a satellite-guided map, a movie theatre, and an intelligence system of its own unless it is in the hands of my sons in which case it is just a weapon. So too in medicine, the merging of technologies has combined with amazing medical discoveries, primarily the unfolding of the human genome, to create fascinating advances in the worlds of bioengineering, epigenetics, pharmacogenomics, artificial intelligence, immunotherapeutics, nanotechnology, etc. Medicine is truly a dynamic, promising and exciting place to be. And so doctors too have had to change. We resort to electronic medical records primarily because we can no longer read our own writing. We use the internet in our office because patients use the internet outside our office. But along with all the excitement comes a plethora of myths and misunderstandings. Patients get confused when they read one thing on the internet and are told another by Oprah, Oz or Peter Mansbridge. After making a diagnosis, it is not unusual for me to say, “Now Bloggins, for more information on your herpes please learn all you can about it online.” Doctors simply don’t have time anymore to explain all the ramifications of this pill or that rash. There is just too little time and too many golf courses. But sending Bloggins off to get nothing but net might not always be the best advice either, as he may return with the notion that if he rubs petrified sea otter dung on his left uvula while humming the theme from Hawaii 5-0, the herpes will leave his body and go back to its birthplace, Charlie Sheen. Knowledge is power, particularly when it comes to your health. Some doctors have specific and reliable websites that they will send patients to. Others actually create their own to help you keep abreast and sort through these exciting times. If you don’t currently use a reliable site or if your medical resource site has the word “gojipizza” in its title, then I invite you to use the brand-spanking new www.wisequacks.org — a reliable sounding name if there ever was one. In fact, via this site you can follow us, stalk us, talk to us, face us, hear us and share pizza pops with us on Tuesdays. Through this site you can access us via YouTube, Twitter and Facebook (the so called ‘you-twit-face’ combo). We have a segment on Hits & Myths, a Question of the Week, feature articles, videos, podcasts, new advances and more. If you click on a bluebird picture, you will get Twitter. If you click on Dr. Sealey’s picture, you will get a twit. Should you decide not to use this website we completely understand but warn you, and this is a promise, that anyone who does not use this website will eventually die. And, though we won’t go so far as to say that this site will save your life, we know of nobody who has regularly used this website who has ever contracted ebola virus or scurvy. Yet we are quite certain that virtually all of those who have succumbed to fulminant bubonic plague never used this site. Just sayin’. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Tatarewicz (#0)
(Edited)
This is a simple question to answer. You CANNOT trust Google because they are an international corporation. Their only allegiance is to themselves. The rest of us are lice, and a parasite on the body politic. ;) "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one." Edmund Burke
|
||
|
[Home]
[Headlines]
[Latest Articles]
[Latest Comments]
[Post]
[Sign-in]
[Mail]
[Setup]
[Help]
|
||