On 23/10/2010 13:46, Fred Bauder wrote: >> On 23/10/2010 08:02, SlimVirgin wrote: >>> >>> Look at our article -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atorvastatin There >>> is criticism, no mention of how much money the drug is making for the >>> company, no mention of how widespread and unquestioned the >>> prescription of these drugs is. And I know from experience at another >>> statin article that it would be very difficult to add this material. >>> >>> Some examples of the criticism available in the media, which you >>> almost certainly won't find on Wikipedia: >>> >> >> OK this is going to be controversial but have you ever considered taht >> maybe you shouldn't have anything on Atorvastatin other than what comes >> as the medical advice in the packaging? One cannot provide any useful >> advice on whether someone should use the drug or not that should be >> between the patient and their doctor. I mean its not as if wikipedia is >> an expert pharmacopeia as wikipedia doesn't have experts weighing the >> evidence one way or the other, all you can do is mimic the day to day >> controversy which of its very nature is going to be conflict ridden. >> > > A survey of doctors in the United States showed that about 50% at least > occasionally look at Wikipedia while about 5% edit at least a little. > Doctors, it turns out, are just smart, grown-up college students who need > information in a convenient accessible format. So, it turns out, we're in > the business. We had a long discussion about not giving detailed > information about appropriate doses of drugs, information that patients > might rely on to their detriment. > > We are not experts in medicine, what we do is summarize the findings of > experts. The difficulty with that is that only brief abstracts of most > research are available to most of us. >
Someone that is familiar with a subject can give appropriate weight to the information presented. I well recall going round to see some one who had just had cancer surgery, when I got there they were absolutely devastated as they'd just read on the internet that the 5 year survival rate was 90% and thought that meant that 90% died within five years. A mistake on their part that was easily put right. However if some one had been vandalizing a wiki page to say that the survival rate was 10% ... Again go back to the MMR article: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MMR_vaccine&oldid=6127791#The_MMR_controversy the stupid CJD link lasted for 2 years or more. What was a parent that came across that supposed to think? _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l