[WikiEN-l] Health advice from the web

[David Goodman]

I think you forgot to specifically mention the ongoing efforts of the
US medical profession and its auxiliaries to prevent meaningful
reform.


David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG



On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 5:45 PM, Emily Monroe<bluecaliocean at me.com> wrote:
> If I may jump into the conversation with an ethical question:
>
> It has occurred to me that sometimes people legitimately can't get to
> a doctor (or other professional) that will help them. Sometimes they
> can't even *get* to a doctor to begin with. If they are lucky to have
> the internet, it would make sense to use it. Wikipedia is on the
> internet, and so it does make some sense (less sense than say,
> checking a medical website, but still some sense) to check it.
>
> What obligation does Wikipedia have to these people?
>
> Emily
> On Aug 3, 2009, at 3:11 PM, David Goodman wrote:
>
>> People are always going to mistreat and misdiagnose; let them at least
>> have correct information, which is more likely to guide them right
>> than incomplete information. Not doing this when in one's power is as
>> immoral as telling deliberate lies.
>>
>> Considering only public information for now, I think there are no
>> exceptions at all to the requirement to give full information in all
>> cases and all subjects, except for young children, and except for
>> information intended to specifically & unjustly harm a private
>> individual. I mean it quite literally, essentially following JS Mill.
>> For those who do think we have a responsibility not to tell the public
>> what they might use improperly,  I remind them, first, that this is
>> the explanation used for all censorship--censorship is the classic
>> valid example of a slippery slope. And second, that this is
>> information the governments of the English-speaking countries not only
>> permit but require to be publicly available, and that is in fact
>> widely available. We are not breaking new ground here.
>>
>> In any case, I cannot see how standard drug dosage information is more
>> harmful than any other facet of medicine.
>>
>>
>> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 12:11 AM, Ben Kovitz<bkovitz at acm.org> wrote:
>>> David Goodman wrote:
>>>
>>>> this is information that essentially
>>>> everyone in the world considers basic reference information, that is
>>>> available in authoritative form for all the english speaking
>>>> countries
>>>> (slightly different in each), and could easily be adding with
>>>> absolutely impeccable official references, but which the medicine
>>>> wikiproject refuses to add.
>>>>
>>>> why? people might misinterpret it; we shouldn't tell people how to
>>>> treat illnesses, this is the role of physicians, it's different in
>>>> different countries, it changes frequently, there are all sort of
>>>> special considerations, and so on. (The arguments against each
>>>> should
>>>> be obvious: we tell people everything else about treating the
>>>> illnesses, physicians should not hold a monopoly of medical care, we
>>>> can easily give the different approved dosages just as we give the
>>>> different drug names, everything else relative to medicine changes
>>>> also & we update the encyclopedia, everyone understands that there
>>>> are
>>>> exceptions  as with everything else in the world.)
>>>
>>> Would it accurate to say that the main concern is blame-avoidance?
>>>
>>> That is, giving out certain kinds of information carries legal or
>>> ethical responsibility, because people will take important action
>>> based on that information.  Legal and medical information are the
>>> classic examples.
>>>
>>> However, the great strength of Wikipedia is its approach of "better
>>> to
>>> make errors and let people fix them than to get nowhere by trying to
>>> prevent errors before they happen".  That's how Wikipedia grew, and
>>> it
>>> goes head on against the arguments you mentioned above.  It's a
>>> strange thing for Wikipedians to oppose including a certain broad
>>> category of information, which everyone agrees is valuable and
>>> noteworthy, simply because errors and misinterpretations are
>>> possible.
>>>
>>> Now, medical information is particularly prone to a certain kind of
>>> dangerous misinterpretation.  Naïve readers want simple claims they
>>> can rely on, like "X cures Y".  The reality is that drugs always have
>>> trade-offs, and there's enough variation among people that treatments
>>> affect different people in different ways.  Naïve readers are prone
>>> to
>>> lift statements out of context or simplify them dangerously:
>>> "Wikipedia said X cures Y, but all I got was hives!" when actually
>>> the
>>> text said, "X cures Y in 60% of people, and it causes hives in 0.2%
>>> of
>>> people"--perhaps in a big table, mixed in with lots of other
>>> information.  On top of that, those numbers are usually statistical
>>> extrapolations, open to debate, and the medical consensus is always
>>> shifting, and there is always dissent.
>>>
>>> Maybe the folks here can brainstorm a way around this.  Can you
>>> tell a
>>> few specific bits of information, say, about just one specific drug,
>>> that would be nice to include, but that raise the blame-related
>>> objections?
>>>
>>> (Or, if I've got the underlying concern wrong, please post about
>>> that.)
>>>
>>> Ben
>>>
>>>
>>>
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