A Google-loving hypochondriac confesses

By Lisa Quinn in A doctor's life on Thursday, April 9, 2009 @ 10:18

As one of the many people involved in the co-ordination of the PasTest range of clinical courses, whether it is MRCS OSCE, MRCP 2 PACES or MRCPCH 2 clinical, I am continuously spending time adding and updating patient information on our database, and often find myself wondering exactly what certain conditions are, how they manifest, and how they affect patients' lives.  Getting a little carried away, this is where my world spins off into curiosity!!

So off to the internet I go – I look up certain conditions and then one things leads to another and I often spend time considering if I may suffer from a similar condition – the list is endless!. However, this is exactly how my attention was drawn to an article on http://www.e-health-insider.com/ website recently stating that:-

 “Doctors are calling on internet search engine Google to change its advertising policies to prevent links to unproven remedies appearing when patients search for medical information. Researchers from the Faculty of Medicine at Florence University, Italy, writing in the BMJ, claim that Google's sponsored links are sometimes to web pages that contain worrying medical claims”

According to the article, typing ‘aloe’ into Google presents sponsored links recommending the use of aloe as an effective alternative to chemotherapy.  Worse still are the pages that contain false  (and potentially dangerous) medical claims.

Google claim that they already have strict safeguards in place, that I can indeed attest to – trying to advertise our medical student title "Therapeutics and Pharmacology” is a nightmare because we’re not registered with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain.  So as far as Google are concerned they are making an effort to protect patients, but perhaps they need to widen their disallowed search term list, although that will inevitably encumber the websites that sell aloe legitimately for its many therapeutic qualities including irritable bowel syndrome and sunburn!

However - lesson learnt – I will stop self diagnosing myself and instead drag myself of to my GP which I am very glad to say is a rare occurrence and shall hopefully remain that way!