"Take the world of scientific medical research. ... the internet has meant a dramatic surge in lay-people using the scholarly literature to research their, or a family member’s illness, to help frame questions to doctors, to look at the results of new studies and the like. NIH has actually redesigned Medline to make it more accessible to lay people.

Sometimes, of course, this means that medically untrained people misdiagnose their illnesses, pester their doctors with fanciful interpretations of

irrelevant studies, or refuse vaccines based on unproven charges of their effects.

These are real costs, yet the consensus seems to be that the benefits are even

greater – improving health knowledge, helping to catch misdiagnoses,

encouraging people to seek medical care more quickly when it is appropriate,

assisting in the formation of patient groups, and sometimes even catalyzing

patient-led attempts to encourage development of new therapies."

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