Source:  HealthDay; New England Journal of Medicine (March 4th)

Seriously?  A study of over 16,000 over 7 years has been published which suggests that while people are doing their own research on the WWW, they ultimately take the information to their doctors for a discussion.  Defining the health and disease information available to the public as “noise” the researchers from the U.S. National Cancer Institute (who produced the survey) reveal their bias.

“The doctor’s appointment is an institution that will not budge,” Affirms Susannah Fox of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

Apparently there was concern that with the wealth of information now available to patients online that doctor’s visits would be supplanted in the way that the internet supplanted newspapers and travel agencies.

The problem with this reasoning is that as yet, people aren’t able to treat themselves online or prescribe medication on line.  Accordingly doctors should feel secure in the sense that they are still needed. Unless there is something more in the way of specific information the authors have declined to provide the issue of whether one can draw any conclusion as to trust from the data is speculative at best.

~Posted by D.M. Schwadron, Esquire