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A picture of the cover of Benjamin Spock’s recordbreaking bestseller-
‘Baby and Child Care’ – was used to illustrate a point made by Tom
Ferguson in the section of his article subtitled ‘From Dr Spock to
drkoop.com’. We are told that a Harvard cybermedicine pioneer – Warner
Slack – has compared the rapid growth of online health resources to the
seismic impact of the publication of Spock’s book, which, he suggested,
had rapidly made it clear that “well informed parents could take much
better care of their kids.”
By coincidence, I had used the same picture of the cover of Dr
Spock’s book the previous week at the Cochrane Colloquium in Cape Town,
but to make a different point. In the edition of ‘Baby and Child Care’
that I bought as a recent medical graduate in the mid-1960s, I had marked
a passage which read: “There are two disadvantages to a baby’s sleeping
on his back. If he vomits, he’s more likely to choke on the vomitus.
Also he tends to keep his head turned towards the same side....this may
flatten the side of his head....I think it is preferable to accustom a
baby to sleeping on his stomach from the start.” No doubt like millions
of his other readers, I passed on and acted on this apparently rational
and authoritative advice.
We now know that the advice promulgated so successfully in Spock’s
seismic bestseller led to thousands, if not tens of thousands, of
avoidable cot deaths. This should be a sobering warning to those who
exploit the internet to promulgate health advice without ensuring that
reliable empirical research evidence has shown that their prescriptions
and proscriptions are more likely help than to harm other people.
1. Ferguson T. Online patient-helpers and physicians working
together: a new partnership for high quality health care. BMJ
2000;321:1129-32.
While I very much enjoyed and agreed with your article about online
patients, I was disappointed that you didn't mention ACOR (Association of
Cancer Online Resources). They have 99
different cancer emailing lists, and have been providing many of these
lists for several years (the number grows constantly as specific needs
become apparent). I think that in many ways it would have been nice to
list a CHARITABLE organization among those you listed in the article,
especially since one of ACOR's strengths, from my perspective as a
patient, is their focus on privacy.
The lethal potential of invalid health information – on paper and on the internet
A picture of the cover of Benjamin Spock’s recordbreaking bestseller-
‘Baby and Child Care’ – was used to illustrate a point made by Tom
Ferguson in the section of his article subtitled ‘From Dr Spock to
drkoop.com’. We are told that a Harvard cybermedicine pioneer – Warner
Slack – has compared the rapid growth of online health resources to the
seismic impact of the publication of Spock’s book, which, he suggested,
had rapidly made it clear that “well informed parents could take much
better care of their kids.”
By coincidence, I had used the same picture of the cover of Dr
Spock’s book the previous week at the Cochrane Colloquium in Cape Town,
but to make a different point. In the edition of ‘Baby and Child Care’
that I bought as a recent medical graduate in the mid-1960s, I had marked
a passage which read: “There are two disadvantages to a baby’s sleeping
on his back. If he vomits, he’s more likely to choke on the vomitus.
Also he tends to keep his head turned towards the same side....this may
flatten the side of his head....I think it is preferable to accustom a
baby to sleeping on his stomach from the start.” No doubt like millions
of his other readers, I passed on and acted on this apparently rational
and authoritative advice.
We now know that the advice promulgated so successfully in Spock’s
seismic bestseller led to thousands, if not tens of thousands, of
avoidable cot deaths. This should be a sobering warning to those who
exploit the internet to promulgate health advice without ensuring that
reliable empirical research evidence has shown that their prescriptions
and proscriptions are more likely help than to harm other people.
1. Ferguson T. Online patient-helpers and physicians working
together: a new partnership for high quality health care. BMJ
2000;321:1129-32.
Competing interests: No competing interests