The Jack of All Ills: How the Internet Democratized Medicine

I’m old enough and just craggy enough to remember the pure disdain medical doctors had  for the internets in the early 1990’s when the web was growing by bounds and grabbing the brains of any and every eager mind.  The reason doctors hated the internet was because open access to information diluted their expertise by egalitarian dissemination of research and the democratic propagation of information; and they resented it when patients knew more about a drug or a condition than they did.  Eager patients are hungry for information and becoming the master of a single pill or a defined diagnosis is much easier than having to worry about every single chemical condition and biological solution studied at medical school.  Patients are the masters of their ailments; doctors are the jack of all ills.

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Today, I Got Scared by the Internets: Ten Sentence Story #128

Today, I got scared by the Internets.

I was minding my own business when a Google Alert shot into my Inbox.

I dutifully clicked the link.

Then, I found this “Kooky Dude” — “Kooky Tati?” — staring me down.

Continue reading → Today, I Got Scared by the Internets: Ten Sentence Story #128