Next Question
RSS
I am somewhat discouraged by the what may turn out to be overreaction to the treatment of this issue. Maybe because I have a chronic condition, I am overly concerned about (ab)using this policy to avoid answering any medicine interaction and dosage questions. Therefore, it would be more difficult to help people in similar circumstances. I think you have a disclaimer when I go into the money category. Why is this not sufficient when going into a health question?
Obviously, one should delete answers that prescribe medicine or otherwise seem like a patient-doctor conversation. But, if information is forbidden, then I would be scared that the person, i.e., patient, not getting information from others that could help them with his/her illness. For example, if I had known that a certain medicine has a side-effect of coughing, then I would have asked my doctor for a different medicine. Since I didn't know this (and I did ask my doctor about my coughing), I coughed and coughed (for several months) and eventually got used to the side-effect of the medicine. If I had only known there were other medicines that didn't have this side-effect, I could have requested another medicine from my doctor.
I would also like to address the example of overdosing on a medicine. The medicine I'm taking can have radically different dosages for patients. Therefore, getting people to answer that some people can take 20x of a certain drug would reassure them that their doctor is right and they shouldn't stop taking the drug because they think it is too much to take. That is one example from an actual email conversation that happened in my group.
So, I'm concerned about the chilling effect of free trade of information that a policy such as this may engender. One must be responsible for his/her own actions. With a disclaimer that any advice is not medically sound and may be from someone who isn't qualified, I think you should be covered. However, I am not a lawyer and I hate the way that America, at least, has been "lawyerized."
Doctors are people just like the rest of us and have their own blind spots, prejudices, and downright quackery as any other person in a profession no matter how carefully they say they self-police. There are doctors that give bad advice and they should be called on it. There are so many medical policies, treatments, and other information that are updated all the time. It is nearly impossible for doctors to keep up with it all.
I know that any advice should be taken with a grain of salt. The community should be self-policing with people saying that an answer is complete nonsense. I belong to emailing lists where there are 25 to 50 messages a day. Without this group, I would never have learned so many things. There is an agreement we have read and checked that we've understood before being able to post. There do not seem to be any doctors prescribing treatments on the mailing list. If fact, I believe a doctor would be foolish to do so.
Perhaps I'm mischaracterizing your concern and what you are trying to do. My advice would be to either ban it all or have a disclaimer and ban any obvious questions (how much strychnine would I need to kill someone) from the site. I see the positives that an active support community can have and I would like to see more such support in the internet and on Mahalo Answers.
Source(s):
Personal experience.
Permalink | Report
One site I thought was innovative is American Well:
http://www.americanwell.com
You can visit this site and ask a physician, or speak to a physician live.
Here are other sites that specialize in this type of question and answer:
http://www.mdadvice.com/ask/ask.htm
http://health.justanswer.com
http://www.teenhealthtalk.net/askdoc
http://www.askthedoctor.ca
http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu
http://kidshealth.org/teen/your_body/medical_care/questions_doctor.html
Source(s):
My thoughts.
Permalink | Report
Permalink | Report
I havebeen repeatedly victimized by medical malpractice and doctors that ignore me and teh side effects on meds--I almost died...sometimes non medical professionals can give you better info.
There is nothing wrong with someone researching and posting info they find-as long as there is a disclaimer..
there are websites that let you input the list of meds--and it tells you of known interactions--I don't remember which one I used--but it was a legitimat pharmacy website.
I have had severe side effects frommeds that no pharmacist, doctor, or phamlet warned me about-yet I was able to get correct info form optehr people that used the med.
Permalink | Report
Answered Question
M$1
December 28, 2008 10:12 PM
Thoughts on medicine-related questions on Mahalo Answers.
From time to time we might see people ask questions about medicine and drug interactions on Mahalo Answers. It is very important that we do not attempt to answer questions like these on Mahalo for obvious reasons.
While internet might be a good place for folks to start their research on medicine they are taking or considering taking, it is NOT a place to actionable advice with regard to medicines.
On any questions you choose to answer about medicine I would be very clear up front to tell folks that you are NOT a doctor or medical professional and that they should see one. I'd do this at the start of your answer and/or comment, as well as at the bottom.
If the question was "have you taken this medicine" you might be OK to answer that question with disclaimers at the start and end of the answer, but you should absolutely not answer things like "should i take this drug?" or "will these two drugs mix well?"
As a message board--which is really what Mahalo Answers is--you are responsible for your answers and you really don't want to open yourself up to potential legal action for giving out advice you're not qualified to give. I know, it's a slim chance this would happen or that the person would prevail--but people will take legal action for any reason.
A polite "I'm not a doctor, but here is the official link to the page on that drug. I'd encourage you to discuss it with your doctor." is a nice way to answer these questions.
Or, "I'm not a doctor and you should consult one for questions like this. In terms of research I did find these three studies on aspirin on the Wikipedia's citations section. You might want to print these out and discuss them with your doctor to find out if they are legitimate. Again, I'm not a medical professional." would be an excellent way of getting people to research and encouraging them to discuss it with their health care provider.
Clearly folks want to talk about health issues, but we want to be very honest about the limitations we all have. Now, if you're a health professional--a doctor for example--and you want to give advice on Mahalo you're probably aware of the risks associated with that and you've discussed it with your insurance firm.
As everyone knows, there is no way to confirm anyone's actually credentials on Mahalo Answers--or the internet in general. You could be talking to a 12 year old who is saying they are doctor, or a mentally disturbed person claiming to be a researcher.
As the saying goes, on the internet no one knows you're a dog. :-)
Please feel free to reference this question in the future for new users. Your intelligent, considered thoughts are welcome below.
While internet might be a good place for folks to start their research on medicine they are taking or considering taking, it is NOT a place to actionable advice with regard to medicines.
On any questions you choose to answer about medicine I would be very clear up front to tell folks that you are NOT a doctor or medical professional and that they should see one. I'd do this at the start of your answer and/or comment, as well as at the bottom.
If the question was "have you taken this medicine" you might be OK to answer that question with disclaimers at the start and end of the answer, but you should absolutely not answer things like "should i take this drug?" or "will these two drugs mix well?"
As a message board--which is really what Mahalo Answers is--you are responsible for your answers and you really don't want to open yourself up to potential legal action for giving out advice you're not qualified to give. I know, it's a slim chance this would happen or that the person would prevail--but people will take legal action for any reason.
A polite "I'm not a doctor, but here is the official link to the page on that drug. I'd encourage you to discuss it with your doctor." is a nice way to answer these questions.
Or, "I'm not a doctor and you should consult one for questions like this. In terms of research I did find these three studies on aspirin on the Wikipedia's citations section. You might want to print these out and discuss them with your doctor to find out if they are legitimate. Again, I'm not a medical professional." would be an excellent way of getting people to research and encouraging them to discuss it with their health care provider.
Clearly folks want to talk about health issues, but we want to be very honest about the limitations we all have. Now, if you're a health professional--a doctor for example--and you want to give advice on Mahalo you're probably aware of the risks associated with that and you've discussed it with your insurance firm.
As everyone knows, there is no way to confirm anyone's actually credentials on Mahalo Answers--or the internet in general. You could be talking to a 12 year old who is saying they are doctor, or a mentally disturbed person claiming to be a researcher.
As the saying goes, on the internet no one knows you're a dog. :-)
Please feel free to reference this question in the future for new users. Your intelligent, considered thoughts are welcome below.
Interesting Question?
Yes ()
No ()
- In Mahalo Answers Community |
- |
- Report |
-
Share
RSS
Best Answer Chosen by Asker
| December 28, 2008 11:44 PM |
Obviously, one should delete answers that prescribe medicine or otherwise seem like a patient-doctor conversation. But, if information is forbidden, then I would be scared that the person, i.e., patient, not getting information from others that could help them with his/her illness. For example, if I had known that a certain medicine has a side-effect of coughing, then I would have asked my doctor for a different medicine. Since I didn't know this (and I did ask my doctor about my coughing), I coughed and coughed (for several months) and eventually got used to the side-effect of the medicine. If I had only known there were other medicines that didn't have this side-effect, I could have requested another medicine from my doctor.
I would also like to address the example of overdosing on a medicine. The medicine I'm taking can have radically different dosages for patients. Therefore, getting people to answer that some people can take 20x of a certain drug would reassure them that their doctor is right and they shouldn't stop taking the drug because they think it is too much to take. That is one example from an actual email conversation that happened in my group.
So, I'm concerned about the chilling effect of free trade of information that a policy such as this may engender. One must be responsible for his/her own actions. With a disclaimer that any advice is not medically sound and may be from someone who isn't qualified, I think you should be covered. However, I am not a lawyer and I hate the way that America, at least, has been "lawyerized."
Doctors are people just like the rest of us and have their own blind spots, prejudices, and downright quackery as any other person in a profession no matter how carefully they say they self-police. There are doctors that give bad advice and they should be called on it. There are so many medical policies, treatments, and other information that are updated all the time. It is nearly impossible for doctors to keep up with it all.
I know that any advice should be taken with a grain of salt. The community should be self-policing with people saying that an answer is complete nonsense. I belong to emailing lists where there are 25 to 50 messages a day. Without this group, I would never have learned so many things. There is an agreement we have read and checked that we've understood before being able to post. There do not seem to be any doctors prescribing treatments on the mailing list. If fact, I believe a doctor would be foolish to do so.
Perhaps I'm mischaracterizing your concern and what you are trying to do. My advice would be to either ban it all or have a disclaimer and ban any obvious questions (how much strychnine would I need to kill someone) from the site. I see the positives that an active support community can have and I would like to see more such support in the internet and on Mahalo Answers.
Source(s):
Personal experience.
Permalink | Report
Reply
Other Answers (4)
December 28, 2008 10:22 PM
These questions should only be answered by a doctor. I believe Mahalo should have people who are doctors apply, and verify their identity if they are to answer a question like this. Even so, you should ask your local doctor because a question like this can be misconstrued over the Internet. Even professional doctors like Dr. Drew etc. have told people to consult with a doctor, only because there may be a deeper answer. Maybe this person is on a medication that we do not know about, and they do not mention on the Internet. We do not know this person's diet, or their exercise habits, etc. There are questions that doctors can ask, and better be prepared to answer the person. There are websites that you can consult with a real doctor online, and it seems as though Mahalo Answers has not positioned itself to be one of these sites. One site I thought was innovative is American Well:
http://www.americanwell.com
You can visit this site and ask a physician, or speak to a physician live.
Here are other sites that specialize in this type of question and answer:
http://www.mdadvice.com/ask/ask.htm
http://health.justanswer.com
http://www.teenhealthtalk.net/askdoc
http://www.askthedoctor.ca
http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu
http://kidshealth.org/teen/your_body/medical_care/questions_doctor.html
Source(s):
My thoughts.
Permalink | Report
Reply
December 28, 2008 10:38 PM
Thanks! Maybe you can partner with American Well or another site for medical questions, then they would incur the expenses for these doctors.
Report
December 29, 2008 02:02 AM
Sorry but I completely disagree, I think anyone asking a question on a website has already done a google search and is now interested in the opinions of people who may have had first hand experience with a drug, you can't begin to censor information just because a person does is not an expert, this opens a rediculously huge can of worms, what about herbal medicine, what about exercise (you can get hurt doing an exercise the wrong way) what about diet, what about nutrition) give people a little credit, jeeze....censorship in anyform is wrong on wevsite dedicated to exchange of information. I find it much more useful to hear a persons personal experience with anti-depressants, rather than hearing a doctor give the usual stuff anyone can find on another site, this is obviously not webMD, j this sounds like mahalo just trying to cover their butts, if hte lawyers are so concerned put a disclaimer that mahalo is not responsible for people using htis info to do stupid stuff. start banning questions about medicine and you have to ban many other catagories, what about questions about weapons, what about questions about drugs, what about questions about suicide, the list goes on and on and on......
Permalink | Report
Reply
December 29, 2008 02:31 AM
- Fact Refuted
You touch on a very interesting theme which is "what qualifies and expert?" That is a very large discussion, so I'll leave that out and keep this discussion specific to the topic.
Also, the censorship debate is not really valid since we are but one option out of the many websites out there--including one the user could start themselves.
Each website gets to select what topics they would like to discuss. We don't have bomb recipes, suicide methods, how to murder someone or terrorism strategies for example. That's not censorship, that's us choosing what we want to host on our site. Censorship would be us not allowing someone to put that information on their site.
Putting aside censorship since it's not applicable here, we can look at the best practice around helping the person the most.
If you re-read what I wrote, I specifically addressed that telling someone about your experience taking a specific medicine. Here is what I said:
>> If the question was "have you taken this medicine" you might be OK to answer that question with disclaimers at the start and end of the answer, but you should absolutely not answer things like "should i take this drug?" or "will these two drugs mix well?" <<
I think we agree that there are some first hand experiences you can related that might be helpful. However, getting into the proper use of certain drugs should be left to the professionals. Especially since one size does not fit all and even a doctor can't give one piece of advice for every person in many cases.
In terms of covering our butts, we do have multiple disclaimers all over the site. If you re-read what I'm saying above we're trying to protect individual users (who could have legal action taken against them), and do what's in the best interest of the person asking the question.
In terms of diet and exercise, you are correct there are risks there as well. We have disclaimers for those sections and for all information found on the site. However, the issue we are bringing up here is chemical reactions of multiple medicines and dosing suggestions. I think we can all agree that those issues are very different!
Thanks for your thoughts. In terms of these discussions I find it's best to keep it grounded on a case-by-case basic. We obviously didn't build a knowledge exchange in order to limit the spread of knowledge. :-p
best,
Jason McCabe Calacanis
CEO and Founder, Mahalo.com
Report
Also, the censorship debate is not really valid since we are but one option out of the many websites out there--including one the user could start themselves.
Each website gets to select what topics they would like to discuss. We don't have bomb recipes, suicide methods, how to murder someone or terrorism strategies for example. That's not censorship, that's us choosing what we want to host on our site. Censorship would be us not allowing someone to put that information on their site.
Putting aside censorship since it's not applicable here, we can look at the best practice around helping the person the most.
If you re-read what I wrote, I specifically addressed that telling someone about your experience taking a specific medicine. Here is what I said:
>> If the question was "have you taken this medicine" you might be OK to answer that question with disclaimers at the start and end of the answer, but you should absolutely not answer things like "should i take this drug?" or "will these two drugs mix well?" <<
I think we agree that there are some first hand experiences you can related that might be helpful. However, getting into the proper use of certain drugs should be left to the professionals. Especially since one size does not fit all and even a doctor can't give one piece of advice for every person in many cases.
In terms of covering our butts, we do have multiple disclaimers all over the site. If you re-read what I'm saying above we're trying to protect individual users (who could have legal action taken against them), and do what's in the best interest of the person asking the question.
In terms of diet and exercise, you are correct there are risks there as well. We have disclaimers for those sections and for all information found on the site. However, the issue we are bringing up here is chemical reactions of multiple medicines and dosing suggestions. I think we can all agree that those issues are very different!
Thanks for your thoughts. In terms of these discussions I find it's best to keep it grounded on a case-by-case basic. We obviously didn't build a knowledge exchange in order to limit the spread of knowledge. :-p
best,
Jason McCabe Calacanis
CEO and Founder, Mahalo.com
December 30, 2008 07:49 PM
That is why ther eis a disclaimer that this should not replace professional medial advice.. I havebeen repeatedly victimized by medical malpractice and doctors that ignore me and teh side effects on meds--I almost died...sometimes non medical professionals can give you better info.
There is nothing wrong with someone researching and posting info they find-as long as there is a disclaimer..
there are websites that let you input the list of meds--and it tells you of known interactions--I don't remember which one I used--but it was a legitimat pharmacy website.
I have had severe side effects frommeds that no pharmacist, doctor, or phamlet warned me about-yet I was able to get correct info form optehr people that used the med.
Permalink | Report
Reply
Answer this Question
Related Questions
Ask a Question
Buy Mahalo Dollars with Credit Card or PayPal
Top Members
Most Popular Tags
Categories
- Anonymous
-
Arts & Design
-
Beauty & Style
-
Books & Authors
-
Business
-
Cars & Transportation
-
Consumer Electronics
- Coupons Deals
-
Education
-
Entertainment
-
Environment
-
Fitness
-
Food & Drink
- From Email
- From Iphone
- From Twitter
-
Health
-
History
-
Hobbies
-
Home & Garden
-
How Tos
-
Humor
-
Jobs
-
Legal
-
Local
-
Love & Relationships
-
Mahalo Answers Community
-
Money
-
Music
-
News
-
NSFW
-
Parenting
-
Pets
-
Science & Mathematics
-
Services
-
Shopping
-
Social Science
-
Society & Culture
-
Sports
-
Technology & Internet
-
Travel
-
Video Games
Welcome New Members
- johnmoon, November 28, 2009 11:06 AM
- rogermanners, November 28, 2009 10:49 AM
- lydiasparrow, November 28, 2009 10:42 AM
- ronaldxb, November 28, 2009 10:29 AM
- exel134, November 28, 2009 10:25 AM
Mahalo Dollars are the currency of Mahalo Answers.
Each Mahalo Dollar costs $1.
Once you earn more than 40 Mahalo Dollars, you can request to be paid via PayPal. Each Mahalo Dollar is currently worth $0.75 when paid out via PayPal. Learn More
Nice thoughts.