Doctor Google Will See You Now

There are few words that cause more trepidation among doctors than having a patient start off a visit by saying, “I was reading on the internet”. It’s not that we don’t want our patients to be well informed; a knowledgeable patient is an important part of successful health care.  It is what we call the therapeutic alliance.

What we worry about is what they may have been reading on the Internet. There is a lot of good information available, and I always encourage my patients to learn as much as they can about their own health issues. There are many professionally researched and peer reviewed medical websites. They include such commercial sites as Medscape and WebMD. They also include patient advocacy sites such as the American Diabetes Association and the American Heart Association. And, of course, there are the government sites such as the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health. All these present the best available science and benefit from rigorous research and review.

That is not to say that they won’t change. Science evolves and knowledge improves. What is our best knowledge now may at some point in the future be proven wrong.  However, your best chance of getting solid information is on these well documented sites.

What I worry about are the undocumented or unverified websites that provide what can best be called rumor or conspiracy.   Any time a patient tells me,” I was reading on the Facebook page “The Truth About….,” I cringe.  Any Facebook page entitled “The Truth About…” is unlikely to contain much truth.   

False information takes on a life of its own on the internet. The big lie almost always buries the truth. Long after the article that was the basis for a false claim linking the MMR vaccine with autism was withdrawn by the British medical journal The Lancet, and long after the physician who wrote the article was found by the British General Medical Council to have falsified the data and long after he lost his medical license, the study is still quoted by many anti-vaccine people as being a fundamental truth.

Even when the authors of such false information repudiate it, people still believe it. It becomes part of the legend that “they” forced the author to remove it. No one ever explains who “they” are or why “they” want to keep the public in ignorance. Of course, there is never any source documentation or research reference.

The websites espousing false medical information may be second in number only to that espousing false political information. At times it seems that the more outlandish the claim the more readily their adherents believe it.  It doesn’t even seem to matter that this type of information is frequently published anonymously. You would think the readers would wonder why a person in possession of such great knowledge would refuse to take credit for it. I have often thought that if I anonymously posted on the internet that everyone who has ever drank water has died, that suddenly a large portion of the population would stop drinking water.

So, in closing, I just want to say I want all my patients to be well informed and take an active interest in their health care. And I encourage you to Google any medical questions you have. Just be sure that what you are reading is accurate and verified and scientifically based. Don’t allow conspiracy theories and “crackpot science” to have a detrimental effect on your health.

If in doubt, ask your doctor. If you don’t trust your doctor to give you factual information and prefer to consult with the anonymous pseudo medical websites then perhaps it’s time to find a new doctor.  But please, think twice before disregarding the advice of someone whose entire professional life is dedicated to your good health.