Re:Why skin lesions are peanuts and brain tumors harder nuts
by DoreenMichele on Sunday November 01, 2020 @10:31AM
(#24960090)
Geoffrey Hinton even went as far as stating that we should stop training radiologists immediately because deep neural networks will likely outperform humans in all areas, five or ten years from now.
Diagnostics have become very valuable, but at the expense of good old-fashioned medical wisdom.
Doctors used to be some of the smartest, wisest and most educated people in town. Most settlements were fairly small, so people generally tended to know a lot about other people around them and there was less variability of lifestyle.
Doctors would visit you at home with their little black bag. Dr. McCoy of the original Star Trek was sort of conceived on that model and from there we get the futuristic "black bag": his tricorder. He would aim it at you anywhere he happened to be and diagnose you.
Later Star Trek series were more prone to putting a person in a machine more like modern diagnostic machines. They relied less heavily on the tricorder.
With the rise of diagnostic machines, you see the decline of home visits because the patient now needs to go where the tech is. A side effect: The doctor no longer casually observes details about your home life and lifestyle without having to specifically ask and we don't seem to think this is significant.
We now act like human bodies are specimens in a petri dish and their body is separate from their life. This comes with some inherent problems.
The diagnostics are amazing and wonderful, but we really need to find ways to counteract some of the downside involved in how this is shaping medicine. No, we do not need to just remove humans entirely and let machines diagnose us, please.
Potentially also of interest (though it's from five years ago):
Diagnostics have become very valuable, but at the expense of good old-fashioned medical wisdom.
Doctors used to be some of the smartest, wisest and most educated people in town. Most settlements were fairly small, so people generally tended to know a lot about other people around them and there was less variability of lifestyle.
Doctors would visit you at home with their little black bag. Dr. McCoy of the original Star Trek was sort of conceived on that model and from there we get the futuristic "black bag": his tricorder. He would aim it at you anywhere he happened to be and diagnose you.
Later Star Trek series were more prone to putting a person in a machine more like modern diagnostic machines. They relied less heavily on the tricorder.
With the rise of diagnostic machines, you see the decline of home visits because the patient now needs to go where the tech is. A side effect: The doctor no longer casually observes details about your home life and lifestyle without having to specifically ask and we don't seem to think this is significant.
We now act like human bodies are specimens in a petri dish and their body is separate from their life. This comes with some inherent problems.
The diagnostics are amazing and wonderful, but we really need to find ways to counteract some of the downside involved in how this is shaping medicine. No, we do not need to just remove humans entirely and let machines diagnose us, please.
Potentially also of interest (though it's from five years ago):
Suddenly, a leopard print sofa appears
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9749660