cRPG

Off Topic => General Off Topic => Topic started by: Xant on October 12, 2015, 04:04:52 pm

Title: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 12, 2015, 04:04:52 pm: I was going to talk about doctors and how they have some sort of a weird cult status that transcends them beyond mere mortals despite the fact that they are, on average, average people, with no real incentive to be the best in their trade and to stay up to date on the comings and goings of new technology and research, and how people don't behave like customers when it comes to their health (wanting the best possible product), instead delegating all that to their doctor... but I decided against it.

Instead, you get statistics. And if you live in the US, ask your doctors for your uptodate.com analysis. 90% of the academic hospitals have access to it.

90% of preclinical cancer studies could not be replicated:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483531a.html

"It is frequently stated that it takes an average of 17 years for research evidence to reach clinical practice. Balas and Bohen, Grant, and Wratschko all estimated a time lag of 17 years measuring different points of the process." - http://www.jrsm.rsmjournals.com/content/104/12/510.full

"The authors estimated the volume of medical literature potentially relevant to primary care published in a month and the time required for physicians trained in medical epidemiology to evaluate it for updating a clinical knowledgebase.... Average time per article was 2.89 minutes, if this outlier was excluded. Extrapolating this estimate to 7,287 articles per month, this effort would require 627.5 hours per month, or about 29 hours per weekday."

One-third of hospital patients are harmed by their stay in the hospital, and 7% of patients are either permanently harmed or die: http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2011/04/18/prl20418.htm

Statistical Illiteracy

Doctors often confuse sensitivity and specificity (Gigerenzer 2002); most physicians do not understand how to compute the positive predictive value of a test (Hoffrage and Gigerenzer 1998); a third overestimate benefits if they are expressed as positive risk reductions (Gigerenzer et al 2007).
Physicians think a procedure is more effective if the benefits are described as a relative risk reduction rather than as an absolute risk reduction (Naylor et al 1992).
Only 3 out of 140 reviewers of four breast cancer screening proposals noticed that all four were identical proposals with the risks represented differently (Fahey et al 1995).
60% of gynecologists do not understand what the sensitivity and specificity of a test are (Gigerenzer at al 2007).
95% of physicians overestimated the probability of breast cancer given a positive mammogram by an order of magnitude (Eddy 1982).
When physicians receive prostate cancer screening information in terms of five-year survival rates, 78% think screening is effective; when the same information is given in terms of mortality rates, 5% believe it is effective (Wegwarth et al, submitted).
Only one out of 21 obstetricians could estimate the probability that an unborn child had Down syndrome given a positive test (Bramwell, West, and Salmon 2006).
Sixteen out of twenty HIV counselors said that there was no such thing as a false positive HIV test (Gigerenzer et all 1998).
Only 3% of questions in the certification exam for the American Board of Internal Medicine cover clinical epidemiology or medical statistics, and risk communication is not addressed (Gigerenzer et al 2007).
British GPs rarely change their prescribing patterns and when they do it’s rarely in response to evidence (Armstrong et al 1996).

Drug Advertising

Direct-to-customer advertising by pharmaceutical companies, which is intended to sell drugs rather than to educate, often does not contain information about a drug's success rate (only 9% did), alternative methods of treatment (29%), behavioral changes (24%), or the treatment duration (9%) (Bell et al 2000).
Patients are more likely to request advertised drugs and doctors to prescribe them, regardless of their misgivings (Gilbody et al 2005).

Medical Errors

44,000 to 98,000 patients are killed in US hospitals each year by documented, preventable medical errors (Kohn et al 2000).
Despite proven effectiveness of simple checklists in reducing infections in hospitals (Provonost et al 2006), most ICU physicians do not use them.
Simple diagnostic tools which may even ignore some data give measurably better outcomes in areas such as deciding whether to put a new admission in a coronary care bed (Green and Mehr 1997).
Tort law often actively penalizes physicians who practice evidence-based medicine instead of the medicine that is customary in their area (Monahan 2007).
Out of 175 law schools, only one requires a basic course in statistics or research methods (Faigman 1999), so many judges, jurors, and lawyers are misled by nontransparent statistics.
93% of surgeons, obstreticians, and other health care professionals at high risk for malpractice suits report practicing defensive medicine (Studdert et al 2005).

Regional Variations in Health Care

Tonsillectomies vary twelvefold between the counties in Vermont with the highest and lowest rates of the procedure (Wennberg and Gittelsohn 1973).
Fivefold variations in one-year survival from cancer across different regions have been observed (Quam and Smith 2005).
Fiftyfold variations in people receiving drug treatment for dementia has been reported (Prescribing Observatory for Mental Health 2007).
Rates of certain surgical procedures vary tenfold to fifteenfold between regions (McPherson et al 1982).
Clinicians are more likely to consult their colleagues than medical journals or the library, partially explaining regional differences (Shaughnessy et al 1994).

Research

Researchers may report only favorable trials, only report favorable data (Angell 2004), or cherry-pick data to only report favorable variables or subgroups (Rennie 1997).
Of 50 systematic reviews and meta-analyses on asthma treatment 40 had serious or extensive flaws, including all 6 associated with industry (Jadad et al 2000).
Less high-tech knowledge and applications tend to be considered less innovative and ignored (Shi and Singh 2008).

Poor Use of Statistics In Research

Only about 7% of major-journal trials report results using transparent statistics (Nuovo, Melnivov and Chang 2002).
Data are often reported in biased ways: for instance, benefits are often reported as relative risks (“reduces the risk by half”) and harms as absolute risks (“an increase of 5 in 1000”); absolute risks seem smaller even when the risk is the same (Gigerenzer et al 2007).
Half of trials inappropriately use significance tests for baseline comparison; 2/3 present subgroup findings, a sign of possible data fishing, often without appropriate tests for interaction (Assman et al 2000).
One third of studies use mismatched framing, where benefits are reported one way (usually relative risk reduction, which makes them look bigger) and harms another (usually absolute risk reduction, which makes them look smaller) (Sedrakyan and Shih 2007).

Positive Publication Bias

Positive publication bias overstates the effects of treatment by up to one-third (Schultz et al 1995).
More than 50% of research is unpublished or unreported (Mathieu et al 2009).
In ten high-impact medical journals, only 45.5% of trials were adequately registered before testing began; of these 31% show discrepancies between outcomes measured and published (Mathieu et al 2009).

Pharmaceutical Company Induced Bias

Studies funded by the pharmaceutical industry are more likely to report results favorable to the sponsoring company (Lexchin et al 2003).
There is a significant association between industry sponsorship and both pro-industry outcomes and poor methodology (Bekelman and Kronmal 2008).
In manufacturer-supported trials of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, half the time the data presented did not match claims made within the article (Rochon et al 1994).
68% of US health research is funded by industry (Research!America 2008), which means that research that leads to profits to the health care industry tends to be prioritized.
71 out of 78 drugs approved by the FDA in 2002 are “me too” drugs that are more profitable because of the patent but not substantially different from existing medication (Angell 2004).
“Seeding trials” by pharmaceutical companies promote treatments instead of testing hypotheses (Hill et al 2008).
Even accurate research may be misreported by pharmaceutical company advertising, including ads in medical journals (Villanueva et al 2003).
In 92% of cases, pharmaceutical leaflets distributed to doctors have data summaries that either cannot be verified or inaccurately summarize available data (Kaiser et al 2004).

I hate how if a girl sleeps with a bunch of different guys she's called a slut, but if a guy does the exact same thing, he's called "gay."
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: IR_Kuoin on October 12, 2015, 04:07:35 pm: k
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 12, 2015, 04:14:27 pm: Quote from: IR_Kuoin on October 12, 2015, 04:07:35 pm
k
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Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Vovka on October 12, 2015, 04:27:38 pm: if you want pluses or the approval of others simply post kitties
(click to show/hide)
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or foxes
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Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 12, 2015, 04:36:09 pm: There, there. I know this is all very much incomprehensible to your russian intellect.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Leshma on October 12, 2015, 05:26:47 pm: I'm 8 years old and mister Xant did me a favor by typing one gazillion characters in attempt to educate me. If I was smart person, he would do it in two sentences. Sucks being stupid, you waste precious time on reading through walls of text.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Bronto on October 12, 2015, 07:13:39 pm: Fuck you and your words Xant.

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Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Grumpy_Nic on October 12, 2015, 07:35:06 pm: you're shit
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Kafein on October 12, 2015, 07:54:04 pm: Ultimately the problem in most of these instances lies in health research professionals not being statisticians. To this day they still tend to come from a medicine background, even though the concept of patient care and all that is associated with it is completely foreign to research.

A friend of mine used to work in bio-informatics. Had to interact with doctors conducting medical studies and using software to input their reports, and other health professionals actually creating forms to fill, with all the database logic behind. It's safe to say that guy has coffee-break PEBKAC material for years. But then there are the few health professionals who discover the underlying beauty of software and actually care about understanding what is going on instead of fearing the computer as if it was an Old Testament god.

Those guys publishing about the retardation of the situation still have a lot of material to go on, definitely. But we're seeing some progress as at least the tech giants have realized what is going on.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Paul on October 12, 2015, 09:04:15 pm: I like kitties.

And no, doctors are not average people. Intelligence-wise they are usually well above average. Statististics might need to be hammered more into their heads during university though, as Kafein said.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Asheram on October 12, 2015, 09:27:29 pm: visitors can't see pics , please register or login

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Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Alvin_the_Chipmunk on October 12, 2015, 10:03:13 pm: add tl;dr version
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 13, 2015, 01:28:49 am: Quote from: Paul on October 12, 2015, 09:04:15 pm
I like kitties.

And no, doctors are not average people. Intelligence-wise they are usually well above average. Statististics might need to be hammered more into their heads during university though, as Kafein said.
Having a somewhat higher IQ doesn't make them above average in any meaningful way when it comes to taking care of people's health.

Also, it's amusing that some of you seem to think I'll be upset somehow that you spam and don't care -- obviously I knew that the vast majority of cRPGites would be too dumb to get anything of value from my post, but it is, objectively, interesting information for anyone intelligent. You're not the target audience, so spam away!
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Christo on October 13, 2015, 02:08:09 am: this is now an ISIS thread

just look at all these migrant doctors allahu akbar

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hope you like them
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Asheram on October 13, 2015, 02:18:04 am: visitors can't see pics , please register or login
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Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 13, 2015, 09:55:35 am: visitors can't see pics , please register or login
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Teeth on October 13, 2015, 11:06:32 am: I have got two roommates who study medicine and I have asked them before about how medical research is conducted, and at least in the Netherlands they appear to get a similarly solid basis in research comparable to many gamma fields. Another roommate studies bio-medical research, which is a separate education, as I presume it is in most countries, heavily focused on conducting research. Research is coordinated within academic hospitals, which employ several controlling boards and specialists like statisticians to supplement the doctors and researching staff.

Overall it sounded reasonably sound and it is not like I see any way to avoid having to trust on a doctor. I am a fan of second opinions, but that is really all I can do. Publication biases are everywhere, and I am not about to do my own research in other fields.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 13, 2015, 12:48:23 pm: You shouldn't completely disregard a professional opinion, of course. In fact, you should rely on it heavily; but it's your health you're talking about, do you really want to die or not get treated because a bored doctor made a stupid statistical error?

So it's worth knowing some of this stuff, it might be relevant to you some day -- or someone you know.

What you can do is ask for the UpToDate report of your diagnosis. It provides a summary of research based on disease, i.e., for disease X, these treatments are recommended because of study A, B and C and the physiological facts D, E and F. It includes counter-indications and risks from these treatments because of X, Y, and Z. And it isn't just a literature dump, it's summarized and treatment options are graded - and the summaries are usually written by researchers in the field of the illness. It's pretty much a meta-analysis, and the least you can do is have a look at yours, taking into account all the previous statistics (e.g. the fact that 93% of doctors reported practicing defensive medicine).
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Kafein on October 13, 2015, 11:15:28 pm: Quote from: Xant on October 13, 2015, 01:28:49 am
Having a somewhat higher IQ doesn't make them above average in any meaningful way when it comes to taking care of people's health.

Also, it's amusing that some of you seem to think I'll be upset somehow that you spam and don't care -- obviously I knew that the vast majority of cRPGites would be too dumb to get anything of value from my post, but it is, objectively, interesting information for anyone intelligent. You're not the target audience, so spam away!

Preaching in the desert is not done in vain if the sand can hear you.

Quote from: Teeth on October 13, 2015, 11:06:32 am
I have got two roommates who study medicine and I have asked them before about how medical research is conducted, and at least in the Netherlands they appear to get a similarly solid basis in research comparable to many gamma fields. Another roommate studies bio-medical research, which is a separate education, as I presume it is in most countries, heavily focused on conducting research. Research is coordinated within academic hospitals, which employ several controlling boards and specialists like statisticians to supplement the doctors and researching staff.

Just because when describing an organization it sounds okay doesn't mean it lacks a design problem. Such problems aren't vegan, they don't advertise themselves at the first opportunity. Large scale medical studies require lots of doctors interacting directly with real patients. And there is a fundamental difference in how doctors and statisticians (or anybody with a math background for that matter) operate and think about problems. For the doctors, every patient is different and requires specific care. This attitude can easily make the statisticians pull their hair out because their jobs consist in finding patterns across patients.

Quote from: Teeth on October 13, 2015, 11:06:32 am
Overall it sounded reasonably sound and it is not like I see any way to avoid having to trust on a doctor. I am a fan of second opinions, but that is really all I can do. Publication biases are everywhere, and I am not about to do my own research in other fields.

For most people it's entirely useless, but if you start getting into health problems, asking directly for up to date diagnostics may affect your treatment. And in any case it will reassure you.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 13, 2015, 11:29:25 pm: Medical research in academic hospitals differs drastically from the day-to-day in average hospitals.

The biggest problem for individual patients might be the fact that dealing with people becomes routine. Doctors get bored and annoyed just like everyone else, and if they've just dealt with some paranoid person(s) who think they have the symptoms of every disease, they're less likely to take you seriously. Even normally, if you have some rare condition, you'll likely get treated for the common cause of your symptoms without anyone being too interested in being 100% sure.

Interestingly enough, the information I posted in the OP is entirely useless to the "tl;dr" people because they wouldn't be able to utilize it in any case, so nothing is lost there -- but for 1% of people, it's something to think about.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Teeth on October 14, 2015, 02:02:48 pm: Quote from: Xant on October 13, 2015, 12:48:23 pm
What you can do is ask for the UpToDate report of your diagnosis. It provides a summary of research based on disease, i.e., for disease X, these treatments are recommended because of study A, B and C and the physiological facts D, E and F. It includes counter-indications and risks from these treatments because of X, Y, and Z. And it isn't just a literature dump, it's summarized and treatment options are graded - and the summaries are usually written by researchers in the field of the illness. It's pretty much a meta-analysis, and the least you can do is have a look at yours, taking into account all the previous statistics (e.g. the fact that 93% of doctors reported practicing defensive medicine).
I thought you mentioned this UpToDate thing is for the US, but it looks to be internationally accessible. Pretty impressive body of work and I guess I could take a look at it if I run into some serious health stuff.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Bronto on October 14, 2015, 04:07:01 pm: Quote from: Kafein on October 13, 2015, 11:15:28 pm
Preaching in the desert is not done in vain if the sand can hear you.

LOL! Sand doesn't have ears!!!!

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Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Kafein on October 14, 2015, 10:25:08 pm: Quote from: Bronto on October 14, 2015, 04:07:01 pm
LOL! Sand doesn't have ears!!!!

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I think you might be the only person to actually understand what I'm trying to say here.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Kalam on October 15, 2015, 01:04:00 am: I agree. Medical professionals need better statistical literacy, drug advertising could use more regulation, the last vestiges of those following the 'clinical' school of thought in regards to diagnoses should be stamped out in favor of evidence based algorithmic care, and all medical facilities should share (privacy is an issue: how do you keep patient data safe?) all their medical records that are then subjected to rigorous analysis.

However, as horrible as all this is, I do not trust the average citizen (in regards to medical decisions) as much as I trust the average physician. Not that I'm advocating total trust in your physician, just that you should put as much trust in your physician as your mechanic or plumber. Never judge your physician by how nice she is or how often she seems to comfort you. That's the stupidity that drives the private practice market.

I've never seen a patient properly judge a physician's assistant on diagnostic skill, let alone a Doctor.

I would also assign more trust to someone that discussed diagnoses and treatments as possibilities rather than certainties.

Yes, you should do your own research, but most people have no idea how to analyze research, and Dunning-Kruger Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect) is a bitch.

That all said, I think it would be useful to give people a checklist of subjects to learn in order to have a better general idea of when a physician may be mistaken.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 15, 2015, 01:33:33 am: Two definitions of intelligence I like are "being able to choose actions that steer the future toward outcomes ranked higher in your preferences" or "being able to squeeze the future into a narrow range of possibilities."

Or, alternatively:
(1) the ability to precisely realize one of the members of a small set of possible future worlds that have a higher preference over the vast set of all other possible worlds with lower preference; while
(2) using fewer resources than the other alternatives paths for getting there; and in the
(3) most diverse domains as possible.

Accordingly, when we discuss the intelligence of medical professionals, we run into two different possible problems from the perspective of the patient.

One: the doctor may simply not be very intelligent. Yes, it's true, doctors have quite a bit higher IQ on average than a plumber, but IQ only measures one aspect of intelligence -- a high IQ is required to be intelligent, but a high IQ is not a guarantee of intelligence.
Two: you're just another patient in a long queue of patients. How highly does your doctor really rank your good health in his preferences? How much of his limited mental energy is he likely to spend to make sure the future is threaded through the eye of a needle that it needs to pass through to make sure the outcome is your continued well-being? Depending on your condition, it could be a massive needle with a huge eye that almost no effort is required to go through, or it could be a tiny needle with an even tinier eye, where the doctor will truly have to be exceptional for you to survive (or for your condition to be cured). A person can be as intelligent as anyone, but if they aren't willing to use the full powers of their intellect for your sake, that does you little good.

So, then; we have (1) ability and we have (2) investment or interest. For the difficult cases (contained within this definition are cases that aren't difficult to treat per se but are often mistaken for something else) you need your doctor to have both 1 and 2. Note that this applies, to a lesser extent, to even something like the common flu. Sure, you might not die if your physician doesn't give it his best, but you could get better sooner. Hence why it's important to not hero-worship, to not just transfer final responsibility to someone else, but to treat the doctor as you would another craftsman, like Kalam says: let them do their work, but be the final judge. You wouldn't take back your car if it was broken even if a mechanic told you it's working perfectly fine now. Likewise, if you're told your car needs an expensive part X, you'd be wise to get a second opinion or do your own research before trusting one mechanic blindly.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Paul on October 15, 2015, 09:42:15 am: Yeah, common sense dictates if you don't think your doctor does good work, go to another one. But why write about that like it's some dramatic insight?
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 15, 2015, 09:57:33 am: Because knowing whether "your doctor does good work" isn't as simple as checking whether your car still runs after a visit to the mechanic. The whole point is finding out whether your doctor does good work or not. How are you going to magically realize that your doctor is recommending an option for you that isn't ideal because they're afraid of getting sued, or that they've overestimated your chances of having breast cancer, if you don't know what and where to look for? And the first step, obviously, is to doubt.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Paul on October 15, 2015, 10:19:24 am: Often enough it is simple. Example, my father's knee hurt after volleyball. His doctor only does xrays and bullshit acupuncture+acid injections, clearly for cash cowing reasons. I tell my dad to change to a doctor that at least does a decent imaging diagnostic. He doesn't even believe in the chinese shit.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 15, 2015, 10:20:46 am: Why did you have to tell it to your dad if it's simple?
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Paul on October 15, 2015, 10:22:18 am: Because he secretly wants to stop with volleyball and needs an excuse.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 15, 2015, 10:32:06 am: Then why did you tell him to go to a new doctor, you monster?
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Bronto on October 15, 2015, 12:14:06 pm: For real though Xant, you copy and pasted that wikipedia shit like it was some revolutionary vision that you had into doctor's and medicine. When really, once you wade through the bullshit, it's basically just go get a second opinion if it's that fucking serious, if not deal with it. We didn't need a pseudo-intellectual argument to understand common sense. Yeah doctor's make mistakes but so does everyone else. It's just when a doctor does it, it typically has a more devastating outcome. But whatever. I don't want to ruin your whole pretendtobesmartbyusingtonsofwordstrollbullshit; so yeah, it's common sense m8.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 15, 2015, 12:20:01 pm: It's not from Wikipedia, and I never pretended the statistics are "revolutionary."

If all you got from all the statistics was "go get a second opinion," and "doctors make mistakes but so does everyone else" then I'm sorry for you, but again: you're not the target audience. For people like you, it is indeed just best to go with whatever the doctor says -- it's elegant like that. For those who are able to fully understand and internalize the statistics and what I wrote, it's useful because they'll know what to do with it. For those who can't it isn't useful, by definition, because they don't know what they're seeing. A litmus test of sorts.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Bronto on October 15, 2015, 12:30:28 pm: oh fuck m8! you're right it was all totally over my head! here you go again with the "I'm so smart" bullshit. Ye, go visit this website about your diagnosis, then google that shit because YOU AREN'T A FUCKING DOCTOR WHOSE JOB IT IS TO TELL YOU WHAT'S WRONG! No doctor, that is not a cancerous lump, I've gone to this website and found my full comprehensive list your hospital and you have generated. After a rigorous 5 minute google search I regret to inform you but you're wrong, it's clearly a twin I've absorbed in utero. Get fucked ye.

But hey man, what do I know, I'm the idiot remember. Let's all use a website to self diagnose eachother, just to keep our doctor's on their toes............

Also, I'd be questioning the "statistics" and methods used to obtain said numbers. Statistics are only as good as the control group you've used them on. Fact, 90% of people won't believe we share over 50% of our DNA with a banana.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 15, 2015, 12:52:48 pm: Your reply demonstrates rather conclusively that you've managed to completely misunderstand almost everything that's been said, yes.

As for the statistics, each one of them references the source.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Bronto on October 15, 2015, 01:05:12 pm: LOL sorry missed the last page! Just slogged through some of the bullshit of the first one.

I agree it is good to be prepared especially when it comes to some sort of serious illness/disease and can see how the website would be beneficial if that were the scenario. I've lost a couple people in my life due to cancer but at that point, it wasn't a misdiagnosis it was just they tried as hard as they could with new treatments and exploratory medicine. At which point though, it was too little too late. In one instance though, it was a total misdiagnosis from a doctor who had a pretty impressive background in regards to breast cancer and breast cancer treatment. He missed a spot on a mammogram, and that was his fault but even on a second opinion it was hard to identify.

Anyhow, I'll show myself out....Carry on....
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 15, 2015, 01:18:05 pm: Here's a good case-in-point:

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/09/09/pinky.regeneration.surgery/index.html
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Bronto on October 15, 2015, 01:35:23 pm: Gross dude. She kept her old fingertip....
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 15, 2015, 01:43:37 pm: visitors can't see pics , please register or login
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: WITCHCRAFT on October 16, 2015, 09:09:03 am: Quote from: Kalam on October 15, 2015, 01:04:00 am
you should put as much trust in your physician as your mechanic or plumber.

I have a coworker who likes their dentist because they are calm and strong; they reason that it's very important to have those qualities when you're yanking out molars.

You can't always get a family/friend's opinion for a doctor, especially if you're seeing some kind of specialist and not a general practitioner. You also don't want to doctor-hop with certain illnesses because seeking the treatment you think you need can look like drug-seeking behavior and fuck you over in the long run. Even if you get what you want, it may change the doc's perception next time you come in for something else.

Doctors is just people. They've spent years studying illness and treatment but nobody is perfect. Medicine is a field that is always progressing to something newer and better. It never hurts to look into the diagnosis yourself and bring that up with the doctor. At the very least, you will be able to go into greater detail of your symptoms. Just don't go overboard self-diagnosing and second-guessing the doctor. they don't always get it right, but they have better odds than a random stranger off the street (it's you, you are the stranger).
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Paul on October 16, 2015, 01:47:20 pm: Quote from: Xant on October 15, 2015, 10:32:06 am
Then why did you tell him to go to a new doctor, you monster?

Because I don't want him to walk around with a fucked up knee, duh.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 16, 2015, 06:25:13 pm: Quote from: Paul on October 16, 2015, 01:47:20 pm
Because I don't want him to walk around with a fucked up knee, duh.
If your dad wants to walk around with a fucked up knee, who are you to deny him?
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Paul on October 16, 2015, 10:31:05 pm: A loving son.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 17, 2015, 01:57:30 am: Yes, well, too bad for you that acupuncture works and you denied him his only chance to have a working knee.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Paul on October 17, 2015, 06:54:37 am: As far as I can judge this, it only works on those who believe in it He doesn't.
Title: Re: Man Discovers Shocking Secret - Doctors Hate Him
Post by: Xant on October 17, 2015, 01:34:47 pm: So again: not so simple.