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Because I rarely perform surgery, my primary product is providing relevant information delivered with competence, compassion, and commitment. I must make the correct diagnosis and prescribe the correct treatment. I deliver that information with compassion to meet the emotional and spiritual needs of my patients and their parents. Parents can trust that I am committed to providing the best possible care for their child, rather than primarily seeking to enrich myself. After all, I chose pediatrics.
Three years ago I wrote a column about the use of Google as an alternative to physicians. The public can access a massive amount of medical information through the Internet. That information has been growing exponentially. But let’s look at what else has happened in the past 3 years that reflects the difference between my professionalism and the merchandising of the Internet.
I am a medical professional committed to my patients. The purveyors of information via the Internet are primarily dedicated to increased advertising revenue through click baiting and profiling. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook put it this way: “A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product.”
Facebook and Google learn from the content of people’s messages and search terms to build a personal profile that is valuable to advertisers. Soon that profile could include health information. Recently, 300,000 users were tempted to download a survey app via Facebook. The app developer used Facebook tools to scrape profile information not just on those 300,000 users, but on 87,000,000 contacts who did not give explicit consent. This massive leak of privacy was used to target people’s votes. Similar profiles could be used in focused advertising of health care products and services.
I have a professional and legal responsibility to provide accurate information to my patients. Years ago, Internet service providers lobbied for and obtained legal protections saying that they were not responsible for content transmitted over their networks. That idea made some sense when Facebook was primarily sharing information within families and friends. But then Facebook began a news feed without reporters vetting information and without the ethics of journalism and the fourth estate. A generation ago, three television broadcasting companies competed to provide daily evening news programs consisting of four to six stories carefully chosen to be important and relevant. Now a myriad of polarized blogs on unaccountable social media are designed to solicit clicks, spread advertising, and influence shoppers. The result has been a massive, toxic spill of false information into the noosphere. Given the already poor state of health literacy, this fake news contributes to ongoing problems with vaccine hesitancy, worthless cures, and distrust of the medical profession.
It makes the BP/Deep Horizon oil spill into the Gulf look small by comparison. The cleanup of this social media mess is going to be costly and require new technology. Chemical companies used to dump vast quantities of toxic waste and byproducts into rivers and landfills. Superfund sites involve billion dollar cleanups. Efforts are made to trace where the chemicals came from and to bill the original companies. Under a “cradle to grave” concept, a chemical company cannot avoid liability by giving toxic waste to a fly-by-night waste disposal company. Two years ago, Volkswagen stock lost $15 billion overnight when fraud was exposed in diesel emissions testing. Fines and compensation exceeded $25 billion. It has gained it all back. Facebook stock is worth five times more that Volkswagen. So even billion dollar fines would be a small cost of doing business within social media.
One information technology that has resisted pollution is Wikipedia. Google has been featuring Wikipedia websites in its search engine results for many years. Now even Facebook is contemplating using Wikipedia to combat fake news. I would not treat a patient solely based on information I found on Wikipedia. But I do find it convenient to remind me of information I had learned in the past and to reassure me that my memory is neither faulty nor outdated.
One senator said Facebook had problems with privacy and propaganda.He missed a third issue – polarization. Internet apps are designed to affirm people’s biases.By targeting Facebook users with news feeds and advertisements tailored to their prior search terms, likes, sites visited, and friends, Facebook provides news feeds that support people’s current beliefs. My own use of Google to search for health information is similarly tainted. Social media also has contaminated the ability of government to solicit public comments on legislative proposals.Similar issues make product reviews unreliable.
Overall, it is clear that the public’s ability to use the Internet to improve their health has been markedly compromised over the past 3 years. Professionalism is important. Three years ago I asked who you were going to believe – me or billionaire Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of Theranos? Since then, one of us has not signed an agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission involving massive fraud.
Dr. Powell is a pediatric hospitalist and clinical ethics consultant living in St. Louis. He said he had no relevant financial disclosures. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.
Because I rarely perform surgery, my primary product is providing relevant information delivered with competence, compassion, and commitment. I must make the correct diagnosis and prescribe the correct treatment. I deliver that information with compassion to meet the emotional and spiritual needs of my patients and their parents. Parents can trust that I am committed to providing the best possible care for their child, rather than primarily seeking to enrich myself. After all, I chose pediatrics.
Three years ago I wrote a column about the use of Google as an alternative to physicians. The public can access a massive amount of medical information through the Internet. That information has been growing exponentially. But let’s look at what else has happened in the past 3 years that reflects the difference between my professionalism and the merchandising of the Internet.
I am a medical professional committed to my patients. The purveyors of information via the Internet are primarily dedicated to increased advertising revenue through click baiting and profiling. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook put it this way: “A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product.”
Facebook and Google learn from the content of people’s messages and search terms to build a personal profile that is valuable to advertisers. Soon that profile could include health information. Recently, 300,000 users were tempted to download a survey app via Facebook. The app developer used Facebook tools to scrape profile information not just on those 300,000 users, but on 87,000,000 contacts who did not give explicit consent. This massive leak of privacy was used to target people’s votes. Similar profiles could be used in focused advertising of health care products and services.
I have a professional and legal responsibility to provide accurate information to my patients. Years ago, Internet service providers lobbied for and obtained legal protections saying that they were not responsible for content transmitted over their networks. That idea made some sense when Facebook was primarily sharing information within families and friends. But then Facebook began a news feed without reporters vetting information and without the ethics of journalism and the fourth estate. A generation ago, three television broadcasting companies competed to provide daily evening news programs consisting of four to six stories carefully chosen to be important and relevant. Now a myriad of polarized blogs on unaccountable social media are designed to solicit clicks, spread advertising, and influence shoppers. The result has been a massive, toxic spill of false information into the noosphere. Given the already poor state of health literacy, this fake news contributes to ongoing problems with vaccine hesitancy, worthless cures, and distrust of the medical profession.
It makes the BP/Deep Horizon oil spill into the Gulf look small by comparison. The cleanup of this social media mess is going to be costly and require new technology. Chemical companies used to dump vast quantities of toxic waste and byproducts into rivers and landfills. Superfund sites involve billion dollar cleanups. Efforts are made to trace where the chemicals came from and to bill the original companies. Under a “cradle to grave” concept, a chemical company cannot avoid liability by giving toxic waste to a fly-by-night waste disposal company. Two years ago, Volkswagen stock lost $15 billion overnight when fraud was exposed in diesel emissions testing. Fines and compensation exceeded $25 billion. It has gained it all back. Facebook stock is worth five times more that Volkswagen. So even billion dollar fines would be a small cost of doing business within social media.
One information technology that has resisted pollution is Wikipedia. Google has been featuring Wikipedia websites in its search engine results for many years. Now even Facebook is contemplating using Wikipedia to combat fake news. I would not treat a patient solely based on information I found on Wikipedia. But I do find it convenient to remind me of information I had learned in the past and to reassure me that my memory is neither faulty nor outdated.
One senator said Facebook had problems with privacy and propaganda.He missed a third issue – polarization. Internet apps are designed to affirm people’s biases.By targeting Facebook users with news feeds and advertisements tailored to their prior search terms, likes, sites visited, and friends, Facebook provides news feeds that support people’s current beliefs. My own use of Google to search for health information is similarly tainted. Social media also has contaminated the ability of government to solicit public comments on legislative proposals.Similar issues make product reviews unreliable.
Overall, it is clear that the public’s ability to use the Internet to improve their health has been markedly compromised over the past 3 years. Professionalism is important. Three years ago I asked who you were going to believe – me or billionaire Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of Theranos? Since then, one of us has not signed an agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission involving massive fraud.
Dr. Powell is a pediatric hospitalist and clinical ethics consultant living in St. Louis. He said he had no relevant financial disclosures. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.
Because I rarely perform surgery, my primary product is providing relevant information delivered with competence, compassion, and commitment. I must make the correct diagnosis and prescribe the correct treatment. I deliver that information with compassion to meet the emotional and spiritual needs of my patients and their parents. Parents can trust that I am committed to providing the best possible care for their child, rather than primarily seeking to enrich myself. After all, I chose pediatrics.
Three years ago I wrote a column about the use of Google as an alternative to physicians. The public can access a massive amount of medical information through the Internet. That information has been growing exponentially. But let’s look at what else has happened in the past 3 years that reflects the difference between my professionalism and the merchandising of the Internet.
I am a medical professional committed to my patients. The purveyors of information via the Internet are primarily dedicated to increased advertising revenue through click baiting and profiling. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook put it this way: “A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product.”
Facebook and Google learn from the content of people’s messages and search terms to build a personal profile that is valuable to advertisers. Soon that profile could include health information. Recently, 300,000 users were tempted to download a survey app via Facebook. The app developer used Facebook tools to scrape profile information not just on those 300,000 users, but on 87,000,000 contacts who did not give explicit consent. This massive leak of privacy was used to target people’s votes. Similar profiles could be used in focused advertising of health care products and services.
I have a professional and legal responsibility to provide accurate information to my patients. Years ago, Internet service providers lobbied for and obtained legal protections saying that they were not responsible for content transmitted over their networks. That idea made some sense when Facebook was primarily sharing information within families and friends. But then Facebook began a news feed without reporters vetting information and without the ethics of journalism and the fourth estate. A generation ago, three television broadcasting companies competed to provide daily evening news programs consisting of four to six stories carefully chosen to be important and relevant. Now a myriad of polarized blogs on unaccountable social media are designed to solicit clicks, spread advertising, and influence shoppers. The result has been a massive, toxic spill of false information into the noosphere. Given the already poor state of health literacy, this fake news contributes to ongoing problems with vaccine hesitancy, worthless cures, and distrust of the medical profession.
It makes the BP/Deep Horizon oil spill into the Gulf look small by comparison. The cleanup of this social media mess is going to be costly and require new technology. Chemical companies used to dump vast quantities of toxic waste and byproducts into rivers and landfills. Superfund sites involve billion dollar cleanups. Efforts are made to trace where the chemicals came from and to bill the original companies. Under a “cradle to grave” concept, a chemical company cannot avoid liability by giving toxic waste to a fly-by-night waste disposal company. Two years ago, Volkswagen stock lost $15 billion overnight when fraud was exposed in diesel emissions testing. Fines and compensation exceeded $25 billion. It has gained it all back. Facebook stock is worth five times more that Volkswagen. So even billion dollar fines would be a small cost of doing business within social media.
One information technology that has resisted pollution is Wikipedia. Google has been featuring Wikipedia websites in its search engine results for many years. Now even Facebook is contemplating using Wikipedia to combat fake news. I would not treat a patient solely based on information I found on Wikipedia. But I do find it convenient to remind me of information I had learned in the past and to reassure me that my memory is neither faulty nor outdated.
One senator said Facebook had problems with privacy and propaganda.He missed a third issue – polarization. Internet apps are designed to affirm people’s biases.By targeting Facebook users with news feeds and advertisements tailored to their prior search terms, likes, sites visited, and friends, Facebook provides news feeds that support people’s current beliefs. My own use of Google to search for health information is similarly tainted. Social media also has contaminated the ability of government to solicit public comments on legislative proposals.Similar issues make product reviews unreliable.
Overall, it is clear that the public’s ability to use the Internet to improve their health has been markedly compromised over the past 3 years. Professionalism is important. Three years ago I asked who you were going to believe – me or billionaire Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of Theranos? Since then, one of us has not signed an agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission involving massive fraud.
Dr. Powell is a pediatric hospitalist and clinical ethics consultant living in St. Louis. He said he had no relevant financial disclosures. Email him at pdnews@mdedge.com.