Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Heal Thyself

Fiorella watches Mystery Diagnosis when desperate, and the show has informed her about quite a number of weird, rare diseases and conditions. Each episode follows a certain format: 1) we meet the victim, 2) the the symptoms start, 3) doctors diagnose the condition incorrectly, 4) a wise medic steps forward and identifies the problem, frequently after someone in the family has already figured it out from extensive research in the web.

The episode concludes with a mellifluous voice-over saying that the family doesn't understand why it took so long for the medical community to come up with the correct diagnosis, then explaining it was because the condition is so rare.

So why didn't the doctors do what the family did--get on the internet and Google till the cows came home?

1 comment:

Gary said...

An easy million bucks. Develop a data base with all the symptoms of all the rare deseases to diagnose someone's symptons. Charge one dollar to access it.

Bigger than Google!