This was the case for many years where it was illegal to have advertisements for prescription medicines. They lifted this like 15 years ago. This was very favorable for the pharmacutical companies as now patients are going to go to doctors and ask exactly that.

What is worse now IMO is these direct to patient ads on social media from Cerebral. They show a lot of common things that people do (Like slack off, not pay attention to something boring), and then encourage them to talk to them for ADHD treatement. While more awareness of mental disorders and health is great, it is a bit scary when people can get convinced they have a disorder that needs pharmaceutical intervention and shop these firms until they get a script.

Imagine your grandmother who knows nothing about computers or tech asking you about GPUs and which programming language is best because she's curious about buying Bitcoin vs investing in Ethereum.

For someone who can't tell the difference between a screen saver and a computer virus, the discussion is meaningless, and only the illusion of control exists

They might be an expert, but it's your (literal) skin in the game.

Why? Because the things I personally value in my life and health are not always aligned with the things doctors try to optimize for.

I’ve told the story here a number of times but my tonsils swelled up to the size of grapefruit a number of years ago. After 6 months of steroids and having them drained I wanted them removed. My doctor did not think it was necessary, even though I was living in misery. I ended up just going to a doctor about an hour away and had them out within the week.

I have multiple sclerosis. There’s not a cure but there is highly effective medication. There’s also less effective medications. The highly effective stuff is various degrees of immunosuppressive or has a risk of fatal brain infection that is manageable with proper testing and monitoring. The less effective stuff can seem “safer” because it lacks these particular risks. A regular neurologist might not know very much at all and give outdated advice and treatment plans compared to some specialists and for this reason advocating for oneself is hugely important as long term outcomes can be greatly different based on the treatment choices. The fact is that you can’t just let “medicine happen to you” because the person that cares the most about your medical outcomes is you. Obviously this is an extreme example but it’s one of many.

Well, you know a phone book? And, you know how if you want to phone someone, you tend to look up their number in a phone book?

"Yes"

Well, computers are the same. They only know numbers, they're computers after all, and DNS maps the names you see for websites, to numbers, so computers can find the website.

"Uh, OK"

The adblocker I am going to install, makes it impossible for the computer to see the numbers for advetisers. It can't find them in its phone book any more. So, no ads!

Now grandma understands how DNS works, and what some adblockers do.

Some things are not as technically complex as we think they are.

Been doing the same thing for lots of paper databases, like address books, and been using indexes in books too.

Not to mention, how the library indexed books in her day.

Zero confusion about DNS after I explained urls to her. None.

On the other hand, they're a professional and they've usually spent the majority of their life training to be good at what they're advising you about. I don't demand to be involved in the design of planes I fly on or bridges I cross, because frankly I'd do a worse job than even a pretty bad qualified engineer.

My preference is for the one who I think is being honest with me about how certain they are about what's going on, and when a medical professional seems like they want to appear 100% certain all the time it makes me worry about their judgement.

I think many people have the opposite preference, which seems to me is asking for dishonesty. Seems like an ethically tricky area.

The problem here is that it is the medical professional who is pushing the ineffective treatment.

I know the meme de jour is teens diagnosing themselves with ADHD because of TikTok but it's the perfect example of a whole bunch of people being like "holy shit it's not supposed to be this hard all the time? You can actually do something about it?"

https://www.fda.gov/drugs/information-consumers-and-patients...

Most physicians agreed that because their patient saw a DTC ad, he or she asked thoughtful questions during the visit.

Many physicians thought that DTC ads made their patients more involved in their health care.

Seventy-eight percent of physicians believe their patients understand the possible benefits of the drug very well or somewhat, compared to 40 percent who believe their patients understand the possible risks, and 65 percent believe DTC ads confuse patients about the relative risks and benefits of prescription drugs.

Eight percent of physicians said they felt very pressured to prescribe the specific brand-name drug when asked.

DTC ads help patients have better discussions with their physicians and provide greater awareness of treatments.

The study demonstrated that when a patient asked about a specific drug, 88 percent of the time they had the condition that the drug treated. And 80 percent of physicians believed their patients understood what condition the advertised drug treats.

That should be the doctor's job. Doctors have too much financial pressure to pump patients through, so they have neither the time to get to know individual patients nor time to keep abreast of current trends in their speciality.

Should MedicineX be allowed to have a website with a FAQ? Yes. Should MedecineX be pushing ads on TV/radio that make it seem like it's a cure for everything that ails you? Nope.

I have really, really bad fatigue. It took me years to figure out everyone else didn't feel that way. I was in high school and was able to skate by on intelligence alone.