Interesting article in today's edition of the New York Times. Authored by David Carr, the column, "Call the Doctor" calls into question whether health care policy blogs help or hinder our national (and international) health care debate. He uses the Avandia situation as an example and, as it turns out, a rather personal one.
He went online looking for information, "And here is what I found: everything except insight."
Ouch? Not necessarily. What he writes is that he found a lot of "polarized discourse." And his point is that, from a patient perspective, it didn't really tell him what to do.
Maybe so, but it clearly made him think.
He quotes from (among others) drugwonks.com, newstarget.com, pharmalot.com, corante.com/pipeline, and peterrost.blogspot.com, so it should come as no surprise that he got a plethora of differing viewpoints. But what's a patient to do?
Here's how Carr ends his column:
"This Wednesday, I will see my endocrinologist. We will chat for a few minutes about Avandia and no doubt he’ll smile when I entertain him with all that I have learned on the Web. Then after he tells me what he thinks, I will follow my doctor’s orders."
And sanity prevails.
He went online looking for information, "And here is what I found: everything except insight."
Ouch? Not necessarily. What he writes is that he found a lot of "polarized discourse." And his point is that, from a patient perspective, it didn't really tell him what to do.
Maybe so, but it clearly made him think.
He quotes from (among others) drugwonks.com, newstarget.com, pharmalot.com, corante.com/pipeline, and peterrost.blogspot.com, so it should come as no surprise that he got a plethora of differing viewpoints. But what's a patient to do?
Here's how Carr ends his column:
"This Wednesday, I will see my endocrinologist. We will chat for a few minutes about Avandia and no doubt he’ll smile when I entertain him with all that I have learned on the Web. Then after he tells me what he thinks, I will follow my doctor’s orders."
And sanity prevails.
