Episode 17: Is your doctor a robot?

Straight Talking Doc Unhinged

We have talked about how Flexner's imprint on US health care leaves doctors as unthinking pimps for the drug companies. Doctors rarely independently evaluate interventions and tests, nor is their gaze patient-specific. Rather, they are apt to listen to "experts," many of whom are either directly or indirectly (in terms of their academic funding and research opportunities) beholden to drug companies. Doctors also listen to "authoritative" groups like the CDC or American Diabetes Association, all of which too receive the bulk of their funding and leadership from the pharmaceutical industry. Rather than read studies, digest the pros and cons of purported "life saving" drugs an tests and treatments, and treat each patient as a complex nuanced individual, doctors rely on protocols typically scripted by drug-company tinged companies or doctors. They essentially become robots, reciting the company line and not actually using their own brains. This is most apparent when a doctor uses a calculator to tell you whether you are at risk from a certain ailment or should take this drug or that. Calculators like this seem precise, but they are programmed with bogus data of which the doctor is unaware, and typically they are drug-company created. Doctors don't know about this; they simply use the calculators as though they are factual and spit out the conclusions as thought they are unassailable. These are robot doctors, and we will discuss more about them, as they can be very deceptive and dangerous.