Having sold my rights to the publisher was a big mistake! The
vla. Surf
a patient's medical lit
Equipped with an Internet connection, a good knowledge of English and sound common sense, any patient with a serious chronic illness now has the potential to exceed his anguish while surfing the Web. Illustration lived ...
A routine checkup that showed abnormalities, you get out of your home GP with a prescription from liver ultrasound, serology and HVA, HVB, HCV, HIV and cytomegalovirus. The analytical result is cryptic: "Hepatitis C Antibody (reagent Y generation and reactive ortho murex): positive search (the search for viral RNA by molecular biology may be indicated). "Your doctor then said:" You're going to call Dr. Thierry Poynard, at Mercy. It will give you an appointment in a few months. There is no risk in the short term, but it is better to be treated by a top team. We'll probably get a liver biopsy and offer treatment with interferon. " The information is essential to deliver: a Hepatitis C is a disease that develops in the long run, it ends in 25% of cases by a liver carcinoma, followed by coma about three months, and death . D
Here, anxiety earns you frankly. Take
immediately go to the pity and, meanwhile three months of rigor, decide to use your Internet connection to try to learn more. By interviewing your favorite search engine, you arrive at the site "Euroliver" where you learn that this virus is a single-stranded, positive polarity of about 9400 nucleotides, it measures 50 to 60 nm in diameter and has a molecular weight of 4,106 dal tones. When you read it encodes a large polypeptide of 3010 or 3011 amino acids, and it includes at least six genotypes, you feel you have erred in not following unit values of Biology university. Then you come across a site
U.S. Department of Energy, where you
explains everything a gentleman should know it's DNA, the human genome, how a
virus acts. Certainly, reading is difficult but worth the trouble
. You begin to see the tech-nical
related to recombinant DNA, and you'll discover
vrez a sort of online library containing a lot of articles from professional medical journals. This gives you the idea to type the keyword "Poynard. You're not disappointed with the teacher whom you go publishes extensively on the disease, and in leading journals.
Within days, you've discovered what this disease and what was the consensus protocol for treatment. You then decide to have the views of your colleagues, sick! First point that you worry: liver biopsy. While browsing a bit on a Geocities site, you learn that this examination of
routine "causes 10 deaths and 000 instruments, in 1% to 5 O / o cases, people suffer from pain in the arm Left comparable to the pain caused by myocardial infarction. Then you find an excellent Canadian site, facing the public and the site dedicated to hepatitis C, infectious disease center in Atlanta, which keeps you abreast of recent developments, in addition to the site of the American Liver Foundation
You find finally a discussion list about the disease, This allows you to converse with your colleagues in misfortune, to learn the tricks What one or the other to decrease the side effects of treatment, in short, you moral support. You convince your GP to prescribe a virus genotyping and quantitative PCR. With your new learning, you do not resist the pleasure of telling him that, technically speaking, it is a reverse PCR using as primer the 5 'noncoding region of the genome!
When you go to the hospital, the doctor tells you is what you already know. When you drag him: ¢ Do not you think that in the case of genotype 1b, interferon Amgen produces better results than alpha-2b? ", You immediately feel that he understood that you had worked a topic you want to get away, and we will not make you believe anything. You can then discuss (as equals would be very pretentious) the best treatment approach for you. You enjoy asking for morphine before and not after the biopsy ...
Today, the patient does not speak English unfortunately have no access to this information. And, perhaps more serious, the Internet user who does not instinctively journalist to check his sources will come across sites that describe treatments who at best assert that the most effective consensus protocol, to promise a cure worse than 100% with unknown treatment. 
The Internet is poised to revolutionize medicine, forcing doctors to retrain (for those who would not do) under pressure from patients' can now watch live a consensus conference, it takes place in Paris Montreal, Washington or Tokyo. Remain a major education effort be undertaken to explain to our children that it is certainly not because they have "seen on the Internet" that is true. We will need more than ever to learn to distinguish truth from falsehood. Bruno Mannoni
The Internet is poised to revolutionize medicine, forcing doctors to retrain (for those who would not do) under pressure from patients' can now watch live a consensus conference, it takes place in Paris Montreal, Washington or Tokyo. Remain a major education effort be undertaken to explain to our children that it is certainly not because they have "seen on the Internet" that is true. We will need more than ever to learn to distinguish truth from falsehood. Bruno Mannoni 
Wait. 
Hush.