It must be said (and it totally amazes me that a reputable newspaper editorial board would set themselves up for this criticism!) that laypeople are not always online quacks and online quacks are not always laypeople. The Sun-Times promotes itself as "the hardest working paper in America." In this case it is working extremely hard... to protect an orthodox medical guild which appears to be in full panic over loss of status and likely loss of power.
The editorial implies that anyone who googles physical symptoms as a first response will get harmful advice more often than not, and probably deserves to suffer or die for their anti-medical heresy. It exhorts readers that the only commonsense policy is to see the doctor, and to see more doctors if seeing the first doctor doesn't work out well.
But the reasons people go online first and foremost are clearly:
a. doctors are a pain in the ass, they are arrogant and disrespectful, cost too much, take too much time, and frequently give wrong advice;
b. modern medicine is art to appreciate when it communicates or works well, as much as it is science to be standardly applied for perfectly predictable results; and
c. we trust each other more than we trust elite experts who don't even know us.
I am an anti-psychiatry fanatic in no small part because psychiatry insults and discredits medicine (not to mention the law, which may be more important). Years ago, I suggested that the legitimization of psychiatry as modern medicine has been the exact error which could cause people to stray away from expert medical assistance en masse, and start down a slippery slope of science denial or even broad social anarchy. It seems to me it has happened. I might join in the complaint of the Sun-Times but for the fact that they are only attempting to bully us or shame us, into not complaining and not even thinking about what has caused the situation.
When it comes to understanding human beings and organizing a better civilization, our "experts" are corrupt. Medicine is not merely an imperfect science, it is the ultimate quackery, because we are spiritual beings in possession of bodies, and medicine insists we must be only our bodies.
Too many people in medicine want only to control us for their own benefit rather than help us for ours. And that's in the increasingly rare circumstances when they even know there is a difference between help and control.
When it comes to psychiatry, I sure do say chuck the doctors' orders!
As a matter of fact, hang the doctors!
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