Recently I came across two instances where Google search becomes dangerous.
In one instance, a Girl of about, settled in the US, was eating Dumpling in a Restaurant with her colleagues.
The dish was quite hot.
While engaged in conversation with her friends, shed did not notice it was hot and popped it her mouth.
It was so hot that as a reflex action swallowed it instead of spitting it out.
The piece got stuck in her throat, she could not speak,swallow, her face turned bluish and she could not breathe.
People around her did not notice it, but some one near by noticed it and gave her a slap in her back and she swallowed it.
Otherwise she would have choked herself to death.
Air Marshall Mukherjee of Indian Air force died this way aboard an aircraft this way.
But this post is not about the dangers of eating with out some basic precautions, while engaged in conversation.
( Hinduism forbids speech/conversion while eating).
The girl being educated a web addict searched Google for her condition, symptoms.
She found a lot of cases where the writers have expressed their problems of not being able to touch food for months because of Fear.
The girl got scared and abstained from eating for a week, when some one told her harshly to eat and ate normally.
In another instance, a girl searched Google for pain in the cheek, Jaws and got landed with people writing about symptoms of TMJ, where some one has written that she has the condition for twenty years, in incurable pain and had been under Streiod(?) medication , which has complicated the issues by adding Insomnia to the list.
And this girl has started doing the rounds with the doctors , starting from Dentist,ENT specialist, Neurologist,Neurosurgeon and took FBC ( Full Blood Count) Test,urine Culture, Sputum and Stools.
All the parameters were normal.
The girl started imagining she has some disease hat would stay with her for Life and she would lose her sanity!
She did not sleep for two days, not more than 5 Hours a day.
She now imagines she has Insomnia and wanted to meet with a Psychiatric Counselor.
Having studied Psychology and known what this is about I forbid her.
I scolded her very rudely , counseled her and she is alright now.
Lessons.
1.Medicine is an evolving Science, if not exact.
Doctors proceed from Symptoms to disease and not the other way around.
One symptom may be indicative of any disease, some of them serious, some worth ignoring.
By trial and error or experience or both, Doctors diagnose.
It is foolish to replace a Doctor with Internet search.
Still worse is to reading fro among the first twenty or so results in Google search.
I find people normally taking the first two or three results of Google search as Gospel.
Nothing can be more wrong.
Authentic information need not appear in the first results.
The first page search results are determined not by so much by the correctness of the information but by keywords, the search term used, and then the number of times the article has been read.
If the initial query has been incorrect, the site has used the correct key words though wrong information, the results will appear in the first twenty results.
Therefore the first results in Google search need not be correct.
Again unless you know the fundamentals of medicine do not read internet, whatever the site says it is.
And remember our Body is the best system in the world to rectify itself.
Do not brood over illnesses, consult a Doctor , have faith in him and follow his advice.
Take tie in finding out a general physician who does not prescribe you medicine at the drop of a hat, or who sends you for a lot of tests even for a small thing.
And stick with him.
Such a doctor need not be expensive.
I go to a doctor who is at least 50 years old, who checks me up physically, allows my body to heal without resorting to heavy dosage and one who is cal and not in a hurry.
Related articles
- Court Rules Google’s Search Results Qualify As Free Speech (search.slashdot.org)
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