I'm sorry to hear about your mother. I have cancer, and I've definitely gotten a few "we've never seen x happen with y drug," but they've always been ready to accept that I'm just in the 0.00001 percentile or whatever that this happens to. They've never tried to treat me for something else, they believed that what was happening, was happening.

What is to be done about the strong individualistic element - some might say liability - among doctors in Western medical systems?

AI, unironically.

Exactly - deviate from the established protocol and you open up legal risks, possibly get fired from your practice (since most are big companies now and not individuals or partners), etc.

The irony was that the infectious disease expert checking my mom was very Chinese, both in appearance and accent.

If she (infectious disease expert) had the "western" "strong individualistic element," she might have pulled the oncologist aside and said, "look..." (If she hadn't already done that, but was merely seeing my mom so her oncologist could save face.)

The real issue is mindset and maturity. These issues happen in all cultures.

Alright, point taken...

The question is what to be done about HN commenters bringing America up as the problem on [insert topic here] reflexively.

If I have to read another European go off on healthcare completely uninformed… (not yours btw) I’ve read at least 4 comments this month that take a mostly universal issue and try and shoehorn some anti American sentiment, almost always completely unnecessarily.

It makes a lot more sense when you consider the even specialized cancer docs maybe see a couple thousand cases max over their entire career. If someone takes an experimental cancer drug and dies of a heart attack, their doc may never even hear about it. Or if they do, just assume it was the cancer, or unrelated. Medicine is difficult.

Most of western medicine is a church of denial, dishonesty and extortion. The indoctrination program is very successful, every person is exposed to it repeatedly throughout their upbringing. By the time the brightest minds enter the clergy, they have been conditioned into good little drones and don't have the capacity to understand any thought not within their scriptures.