Okay, so which method would you recommend to an average patient instead?
Listening to experts is the (imperfect) solution for a society with division of labor, so that most people don’t have to study medicine and statistics and make their own experiments. General education can make you dismiss the most obvious nonsense, but beyond that you need an expertise, and either you spend years to develop it yourself, or you outsource it to other people.
I don’t think that you can effectively delegate all decisions about your health to someone else.
There are no effective noninvasive expert-based weight loss regiments. At the same time there are people who lose weight through being motivated to lose weight and working on the goal.
A product such as 23andMe can give a patient useful information about their health without there being a expert doctor who tries to translate. Current laws prevent a customer to buy data interpretation directly from 23andMe.
Last week I was with a bunch of experts at a workshop payed by government to envision the future of health 2.0. I think the room agreed that it would be good for medicine to be a bit less expert-based. We had a president from the medical association explain us that doctors likely aren’t qualified to give good answers when you come to them with good data.
(1) Should an average person try to study medicine and statistics and find out the answers for themselves, or use an expert opinion?
(2) Are people recognized by current laws / credential systems as “experts” really the best available experts?
I would support people getting information about their health from organizations like 23andMe. But I don’t expect 23andMe to do all research on their own—at some moment they are going to rely on some peer-reviewed study. There should be a system where the studies are not easily gamed by financial interests of pharmaceutical companies, or by pressure on scientists to publish even when there is nothing worth publishing.
(1) Should an average person try to study medicine and statistics and find out the answers for themselves, or use an expert opinion?
I don’t think any person will be successful at losing weight based on following the 10 minute advice of an expert and doctors frequently take less than 10 minutes for talking to a patient. It takes learning about food and healthy eating. The same is true for every significant medical issue. It never makes sense to try to outsource the knowledge completely.
I would support people getting information about their health from organizations like 23andMe.
That’s no decision that get’s to be made on it’s own. It’s a decision that’s the result of a system either being restrictive and only allowing experts to diagnose or the system being more free.
There should be a system where the studies are not easily gamed by financial interests of pharmaceutical companies
The question is whether the political realities of current insiders having that much power allow for such a system.
Is change possible as long as power get’s concentrated on well-funded people at the top of the system?
Or are we better off if we simply allow new entities into the system and allow them to do whatever they want? Entities like 23andMe that we currently block?
Okay, so which method would you recommend to an average patient instead?
Listening to experts is the (imperfect) solution for a society with division of labor, so that most people don’t have to study medicine and statistics and make their own experiments. General education can make you dismiss the most obvious nonsense, but beyond that you need an expertise, and either you spend years to develop it yourself, or you outsource it to other people.
I don’t think that you can effectively delegate all decisions about your health to someone else.
There are no effective noninvasive expert-based weight loss regiments. At the same time there are people who lose weight through being motivated to lose weight and working on the goal.
A product such as 23andMe can give a patient useful information about their health without there being a expert doctor who tries to translate. Current laws prevent a customer to buy data interpretation directly from 23andMe.
Last week I was with a bunch of experts at a workshop payed by government to envision the future of health 2.0. I think the room agreed that it would be good for medicine to be a bit less expert-based. We had a president from the medical association explain us that doctors likely aren’t qualified to give good answers when you come to them with good data.
Seems to me like two different questions:
(1) Should an average person try to study medicine and statistics and find out the answers for themselves, or use an expert opinion?
(2) Are people recognized by current laws / credential systems as “experts” really the best available experts?
I would support people getting information about their health from organizations like 23andMe. But I don’t expect 23andMe to do all research on their own—at some moment they are going to rely on some peer-reviewed study. There should be a system where the studies are not easily gamed by financial interests of pharmaceutical companies, or by pressure on scientists to publish even when there is nothing worth publishing.
An average person should not do many things. That is not a good reason for people who are not average to abstain from these things.
I don’t think any person will be successful at losing weight based on following the 10 minute advice of an expert and doctors frequently take less than 10 minutes for talking to a patient. It takes learning about food and healthy eating. The same is true for every significant medical issue. It never makes sense to try to outsource the knowledge completely.
That’s no decision that get’s to be made on it’s own. It’s a decision that’s the result of a system either being restrictive and only allowing experts to diagnose or the system being more free.
The question is whether the political realities of current insiders having that much power allow for such a system. Is change possible as long as power get’s concentrated on well-funded people at the top of the system?
Or are we better off if we simply allow new entities into the system and allow them to do whatever they want? Entities like 23andMe that we currently block?