[WikiEN-l] Health advice from the web

[Ben Kovitz]

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