CHAPTER 2 Online Medical Information
Let’s face it. There’s a ton of amazing medical information available for free on the internet. But there’s also a lot of junk and hucksters promoting worthless “cures”.
Of course, healthy people don’t usually need to learn how to use the internet for medical research. If the need unfortunately arises, you’re starting from scratch.
And The Last Thing You Want To Do Is To Spend Countless Hours Learning How To Use The Internet To Get What You Need.
Searching for online medical information is very confusing and frustrating.
Just typing in the name of a specific disease will result in thousands of sites coming up. Some of these sites are going to be legitimate medical sites with first class information and I'll be instructing you to visit some of them.
However, there are also many sites that may be full of inaccurate or mistaken information. The goal of these sites may be to persuade you to buy their particular medical therapies. Obviously, these are sites you want to avoid.
You Also Don’t Want To Find Yourself Overburdened With Too Much Online Medical Information, Especially In The Beginning Of The Process When You're Just Getting Your Feet Wet.
The internet is so vast, with so much medical information, that sometimes the problem isn't too little information, but too much.
That’s why I’ve to make it as simple as possible for you to accomplish a few essential tasks:
- You need to understand some basic issues about cancer;
- You need to understand some basic issues about the particular type of cancer you’re researching;
- You need to know what the conventional treatments are for the particular type of cancer you’re researching;
- You need to know if there are any cutting-edge or controversial issues in the treatment of this type of cancer;
- You need to know how to contact other patients with the same type of cancer. Often, only people who are involved in the same process have answers to the questions you may want to ask;
- You need to be able to research the most current scientific information on this type of cancer;
- You may decide you want to explore all the clinical trials that are evaluating new therapies for this type of cancer. You need to know how to quickly get information on all of these trials;
- You also need to have an approach to understanding what clinical trials may be promising and why;
- And finally, you have to discuss everything you’ve learned with your doctors and decide on the best course of action.
Now, in a perfect world, all of this information would be available to you at the click of a button. Again, in a perfect world, your doctor could sit down with you for a number of hours and take you through the process. But, unfortunately we’re not in that world yet.
So, regardless of whether you’re a patient, a friend, a relative, or even a medical professional, my goal in this book is to give you a way to quickly and efficiently do the research.
Granted, it will still require some reading to understand the information. But, after a while it will start to sink in, and you'll probably become quite educated about the particular form of cancer you’re researching.
Remember, you don't have to master all of medicine like your doctor -- you just have to fully understand one disease.
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