Under My Skin

Fake medical news: The black salve and the black arts


 

I don’t plan to try convincing them otherwise. No one can convince them. Citing facts and authority gets you nowhere. As Jonathan Swift said, “You cannot reason someone out of something they did not reason themselves into.”

Fake political news is a problem for society. Fake medical news can be a problem for doctors. A pediatrician confronting an antivaxer family must decide whether to try negotiating (giving their kid vaccines a little at a time) or to give up and send them elsewhere.

It takes effort for physicians to have patience with people who let unscrupulous strangers etch and mutilate their faces. As professionals, however, we doctors are obligated to care even for people we don’t like or agree with. We should therefore try to understand why people who undertake dangerous and irrational treatments think the way they do.

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