The health and medical information websites on the world wide web, of which there are now hundreds if not thousands, all tend to have something on them like this:-
Please note that no response can be given to questions seeking guidance concerning personal medical symptoms or treatment.
To us, what they’re really saying is, “There’s information on this site about personal medical symptoms and treatment, this is what we’re in the business of providing, but we’re not going to respond to requests for help in finding it.”
So why are they pretending otherwise? We believe for two reasons.
Mainly, and most importantly, because they don’t want to appear to be doing doctors out of work, and secondly, because if people are spending extra time on their sites because they’re not being given help to find what they want quickly and easily, the better it is for them in terms advertising revenue and so on.
But of course they’re doing doctors out of work – it’s increasingly possible for health care services consumers to get the latest and best health and medical information quickly and conveniently – AND, in written form, making it easy to get second opinions as protection from being fed rubbish.