I'm not a doctor, but I play one on the internet...

In light of the class discussion we had concerning Hayles' comment (in "An Interview/Dialogue with Albert Borgman and N. Katherine Hayles on Humans and Machines") about the potential future of medical diagnosis:

"HMO's are considering programming their computers to make medical diagnoses and recommend treatments based on probability distributions. That's a timesaver, to be sure, but has it crossed the line between calculation and moral judgement?" (http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/borghayl.html)

I got to thinking about another aspect of the issue: humans interacting with machines to diagnose themselves. There have been cases where people, frustrated by a string of doctors who were baffled by their symptoms, tenaciously searched the net until they indeed did find others who were experiencing the same things and found a name for their malady (which then in turn led them to the names of specialists who could actually help them). That, to me, is progress, and something close to the kind of "productive partnership" between humans and machines that Hayles alludes to. But there is another side to be explored, and that is the (sometimes) relative ineffiency and hypochondria inducing nature of that cyber-quest for answers. Check out, for example, the "symptom checker" on WebMD:

http://symptoms.webmd.com/symptomchecker

All you have to do is plug in your sex, click on where it hurts, and (though you can further narrown down symptoms) bingo, up pops a list of possible afflictions (we are, as always, dealing with probabilities). For example, if I indicate I have pain in my upper abdomen, according to WebMD, I could be suffering from anything from depression to sclerodoma. The vagueness is amusing, though the list does provide me a starting point to dig deeper into the rest of those diseases. But I also wonder whether I would really be able to handle being told exactly what is wrong with 100% accuracy after a few clicks of the mouse. In other words, if I had a terminal illness, I would rather hear that news from a human than my pc.

Another issue I've noticed (not that I spend hours surfing for this kind of thing, but there have been one or two times-ok, maybe more like 20--when I was sick and just wanted a clue as to whether I should just ride it out or go ahead and make an appointment) is the incredible overlap of symtpoms that span minor to major illnesses. For example, let's say one is having fatigue, general malaise, a sore throat, minor headaches, and trouble concentrating. Here's my tasteless parody (though not too far removed from reality) of what that person might find if s/he tried to get to the bottom line.

Common Cold

Early Symptoms Include:

fatigue
general malaise
sore throat
minor headaches
trouble concentrating
(and so on...)

Prognosis: With rest and frequent intake of liquids, a full recovery should occur in a week or two.

Mononucleosis

Early Symptoms Include:

fatigue
general malaise
sore throat
minor headaches
trouble concentrating
(and so on...)

Prognosis: May require hospitalization at some point, but patients generally recover within a few months.

Bubonic Plague

Early Symptoms Include:

fatigue
general malaise
sore throat
minor headaches
trouble concentrating
(and so on...)

Prognosis: You will most likely die horribly. But if you do survive, good luck leading any kind of a normal life because you will be permanently scarred both emotionally and physically.


Ebola

Early Symptoms Include:

fatigue
general malaise
sore throat
minor headaches
trouble concentrating
(and so on...)

Prognosis: You will die really horribly. No seriously--you don't even want to know.

And, finally, (drumroll, please), I give you Swine Flu:



My point is this--this kind of information was always available to people in books, but who has ever had the time to go thumbing through medical journals? By the time you figure out what's wrong, you're over it. But with the internet, there's immediate access to that same information that can be detrimental in its futility.