Politics and Health on the Internet
I should start this by saying I may be one of the last people to have figured this out, but I’m saying it anyway.
I have a few questions to answer but I came upon some things this week that frustrated me greatly and I want to make you all aware of them. I’m talking about internet health care politics and trickery.
As many of you know, I’m writing for a couple of websites now, and I’m seeing some things that I have long suspected were happening but now I’m certain about them. The sites I’m writing for are totally on the up and up, don’t get the wrong impression. But there are more dangerous people than your average trolls on health sites, and as someone who is passionate about health education and impartiality and non-judgmental assistance and all that stuff I am a little bent.
Politics figure big into health care. Not just in the US, but everywhere. It’s all about finite resources and who gets what and who will pay for it and who is important enough to have their needs met and who is disposable, etc. We all know that. Nurses are required to learn about the effect of politics on health care, and I was lucky to have a politically active professor teaching my course on that topic. We went down to the state capitol and talked to legislators and drank too much. It was a great learning experience even though I was already in my early 30s.
Part of the politics of health care is information sharing vs. propaganda spewing. This is where the internet comes in. Everyone has an agenda, but some of them are more worthy than others. When I get weird questions about pre-marital sex that are tagged by the questioner with an organization that pretends to have Planned Parenthood type clinics but are actually places to pressure scared girls into decisions without all the facts, I can see the agenda.
I know that people who use disinformation to steer others are legion. They have websites and go on Oprah to bash vaccination while children die of disease we haven’t seen this rampant in 50 years. They have sites that say acai berry cures rheumatoid arthritis and they cater to those who believe their alien overlords mean their children don’t get antibiotics or chemotherapy and instead can suffer and die from treatable disease.
Why am I writing this long editorial whine? I want you to be careful. You may check a reputable health website and find ranting threads about how vaccines killed children with sad, sad stories but no real facts. You may find that when people are allowed to post their thoughts without fact checking, facts are scarce.
The CDC, NIH and WHO have great factual websites. I write for websites that have great factual articles. But beware of comment threads and discussion boards. People insert propaganda into those places even on reputable sites. If something sounds too good or too terrible to be accurate, it probably is. When in doubt, get a second opinion, especially on the internet.
