The New York Times Health blog ran a story about a group of doctors who are responding to a viral e-mail with a viral e-mail of their own. The original e-mail is written by an ovarian cancer survivor advocating the use of a cancer test to catch cancer sooner. Doctors are concerned about the test because its predictive value is not that good and fear that many people are falsely reassured or even undergo unneccessary treatments because of the test. And as a result of fielding a lot of questions about this test, these doctors decided to put their own opinions about the test out into the wild winds of the internet.
You can find the blog here: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/18/doctors-take-on-a-notorious-e-mail/.
So what do you think about doctors putting out information this way? Is it an appropriate way to fight misinformation online? Or does refuting information require a more personal touch in a face-to-face encounter between doctor and patient?
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