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CHOICE: The invention of talk BMJ 2002; 324: 0j [Full text]

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Bed-side separating high medical information from common advertising or worse rubbish.

Sergio Stagnaro   (9 March 2002)

Internet censorship or free speech?

Roger M. Goss   (19 April 2002)

Bed-side separating high medical information from common advertising or worse rubbish. 9 March 2002
Sergio Stagnaro, Specialist in Blood, Gastrointestinal and Metabolic Diseases. Via Erasmo Piaggio 16037 Riva Trigoso (Genoa) Send response to journal: Re: Bed-side separating high medical information from common advertising or worse rubbish.	Sirs, I am afraid that the time has come for providing a further, new medical science or, better speaking, Medicine discipline, to doctors, especially general practitioners all over the world, as well as to University students, i.e., a new study to be learned in our Académies: Internet Medicine or similar definition. In addition, as everybody can see at the present, the invention of talk (Editor's choice BMJ 2002;324, 9 March ) is largely aimed to inform physicians that “only” in some Clinics patients can undergo to the latest sophysticated semeiotics or the most up-date performances of image departement. Moreover, the different world organizations aim to produce quality scale in order to allow potential listeners (general practitioner particularly) to identify hugh quality talk in well defined medical fields, such as genetics, neurophysiology, molecular-biology, and so on, in which faith takes the place of reason, in the sense of the former statement. Unfortunately, nowadays there is little effort from all scientific organizations (with a few exceptions, such as BMJ.com and NEJM, in my opinion of course) to give doctors more information about “clinical” tools, that allow doctors to bed-side recognizing “high quality talk” as well as rubbish, even the later under the mask of scientific progress. I think that doctors or “visitors” or "navigators", which use efficacious clinical tools and therefore are able to distinguish real medical progresses from advertising or, worse, from rubbish (even coming from whatever famous medical university around the world), pay consequently their attention to the useful health information, and doing so, let “the market and customer decise”. As daily internet visitor, I try to regulate the search of information in the light of above-referred advice, having success in collect accurate information of high quality, usefully applied therafter in practice, as demonstrates my site http://digilander.iol.it/semeiotcabiofisica as the weekly Page, I held in the italian site www.Katamed.it.
Internet censorship or free speech? 19 April 2002
Roger M. Goss, Director Patient Concern Send response to journal: Re: Internet censorship or free speech?	Sir – Smith has it right. (1) Give up. Experts invariably want to suppress free speech. They call it quality control. Their well-intentioned efforts all too easily deteriorate into vested interest censorship. Websites offer insights and idiocy. Teach children at school how to try and distinguish them. Remind everyone that the bottom line is always caveat emptor. And that goes for doctors’ advice too. Roger M. Goss Director – Patient Concern (1) Smith R. Editor’s Choice The invention of talk. BMJ 2002; 324: (9 March)