#In fact the article I’m currently talking about isn’t EVEN about Arthur for once

[linklethehistorian]

If I had a nickel for every time I was in a fandom where my favorite character was a gentle, loving, overly romantic and totally gay sweetheart who was clearly written to be an abuse victim with a tragic past, was thrust into a world where he clearly didn’t belong, had incredible power compared to most but actively chose not to cause harm with it in any situation where it could possibly be avoided even when that could come back to bite him in the ass, and fell in love with someone who was so wrapped up in their own tragedy that they couldn’t let him in and thus repeatedly hurt and abandoned him, and the fandom still somehow was so media illiterate that they at large refused to understand this and instead wanted to make him into the villain —

…I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it SURE AS HELL is WEIRD AND ANNOYING that it happened twice.

[kalluun-patangaroa]

Suede brush up

The Guardian, 21 October 2010

by Jude Rogers

(This is the actual article The Ministry Of Sound photo shoot was done for)

Drugs, ME and despair sent the poor urchins of Britpop their separate ways in 2003. Now Suede have come roaring back to life.

'Much less interested in the persona of Brett Anderson' ... Suede's frontman at the Ministry of Sound, London. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi for the Guardian 

This year, in the first flush of spring, a band that time forgot played the gig of their lives. "It was so special, it was impossible to leave it behind, wasn't it? We had to keep picking at it, didn't we? It was like a scab." The once long-fringed frontman who led the band that launched Britpop – albeit against his will, Brett Anderson reminds us – sits in a hotel room on a darkening weekday evening, remarkably untouched by both time and excess, recalling Suede's performance at the Royal Albert Hall in March. Next to him, drummer Simon Gilbert and keyboardist Neil Codling are similarly Peter Pan-like; bassist Mat Osman is in New York; while Richard Oakes, the young pup who replaced guitarist Bernard Butler after writing to the band's fanclub, is in the gents. 

"He's hiding," says Anderson. "He's terrified. Be gentle with him."

In 2010, something remarkable has happened to Suede. Nearly 18 years after their debut album became the fastest-selling in British history, and seven years after they split not with a bang but with a whimper, they are, incredibly, the talk of the town. Next month, they release a carefully curated Best Of – Osman says on the phone, later, that Anderson has spent months labouring over it, making his own CDs to discover the best running order. In December, they play the O2, their biggest-ever non-festival show. This is all thanks to a gig they played for Teenage Cancer Trust back in March, preceded by two "practice runs" at London's 100 Club and the Manchester Ritz. At the Royal Albert Hall, they were a revelation: five men in their 30s and 40s playing at full throttle, as if the world was going to cave in once the curtains came down. When they played Metal Mickey, they received a standing ovation that went on for five minutes. Oakes finally enters the room as we discuss it, and smiles shyly when he realises what we are talking about. "I thought someone had walked on stage, or something. It was genuinely unexpected."

"That's the one moment that I'd relive for the rest of eternity," adds Anderson. "And I did actually say on the night – here's your bold quote if you want it – I've taken a lot of drugs in my life and nothing compares to it."

Anderson at Royal Albert Hall, London, in March 2010. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA 

Everyone laughs. Suede know who the press expect Anderson to be: the easy-to-parody commuter-belt wordsmith, still in love with suburbs and skylines, nicotine and gasoline. The old dog still deploys flamboyant one-liners – when Gilbert's lost phone turns up in his pocket, for example, he says, "Oh, come on, Simon, this isn't Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World" – but in 2010, Anderson is much more self-aware. He is, he says, "much less interested in the persona of Brett Anderson", and even has a sense of humour about having a parodist on Twitter, something you couldn't have imagined 15 years ago.

Since Suede broke up in 2003, all the members' lives have changed hugely. As well as making three solo albums and reuniting briefly with Butler as the Tears, Anderson has married and gained a stepson "who likes being read bedtime stories about pirates", and lost a father, who died in 2005. Gilbert moved to Bangkok as soon as the band split, and now drums for two bands called Futon and Goo ("that's G-O-O"); Codling became "a keyboardist for hire" for Natalie Imbruglia, among others; Osman became an editor of the online zine le cool; while Oakes has been working quietly on a new band, Artmagic, though he had not been on stage since Suede played their last note seven years ago.

But then Teenage Cancer Trust came calling. At first, Anderson didn't know whether reforming would be wise. "There were two conflicting voices," he says. "One saying I'd love to play those songs again, I'm really proud of them. Another saying I should leave well alone." He spoke to Osman and Codling, called Gilbert on Skype, then spoke to Oakes – the least convinced party. Oakes stands out from his bandmates in other ways today: he wears a beige jacket and scruffy jeans while the others are stylish in black; he has a receding hairline; and he still looks acutely aware that he filled Butler's shoes, despite co-writing some of Suede's biggest hits. "I was thinking, 'Oh God, can I do it, revisiting the past?' All these emotions, I didn't think I could cope." Osman will also admit late that he had his doubts: "Men in their 40s performing teenage songs … it could have easily gone horribly wrong."

Anderson confirms there were lots of difficult conversations. "But if it had been the wrong thing for one of us, it would have been the wrong thing for all of us. We kept persevering because we knew there was still something there."

To decide once and for all whether a reunion would work, this version of Suede (Oakes joined in 1994, Codling in 1996), went to a tiny rehearsal room near Anderson's house. It was the first time they had played together for 10 years (Codling left the band in 2000 because he was suffering from ME). It was crucial there were no managers or roadies present, explains Anderson, so the five musicians could just drink tea and chat, and then hook up their instruments. They played Filmstar first, and it sounded amazing, he says. "We also noticed a purity in those songs, because we'd had distance from them," adds Codling. "It also helped everyone remember," adds Anderson, "why they were written in the first place."

As the Albert Hall show approached, Osman remembers them discussing how important it was that they present the music free of frills: "It had to be like five boys playing the Southampton Joiners Arms. To hide behind anything would have been cheating. We had to do the opposite."

Anderson felt they had a point to prove, too. "I don't think there's ever been a point in Suede's career when we haven't. We've always had our doubters. We've always polarised opinion." He stops, then smiles. "Although there's part of me that quite likes that, you know. I never wanted to be in someone's fifth-favourite band."

Suede were born to be divisive: from early on, they were criticised for being the beneficiaries of media hype, even though they had spent years in various bands playing "in front of three people". Later on, the fact that Anderson had been involved with Justine Frischmann, who became the frontwoman of Elastica and dated Blur's Damon Albarn, helped transform Britpop into a class-fuelled soap opera, with Blur cast as foppish class tourists, Suede as poor urchins looking at the stars and Frischmann a black-clad princess tearing them apart. Anderson doesn't think about the other Britpop bands now, he says, though he is still close friends with Frischmann, who now lives in LA; they had dinner together with their spouses last year, and he wishes he saw her more often.

By 1994, as Oasis became more popular, it became clear that Suede didn't fit into Britpop any more, even though it was still a year before the scene's commercial apogee. Butler's departure also gave the critics extra fuel for the fire. "They realised that a part of our armour was missing," recalls Anderson. "That was the first time I realised that people often run in packs, and when they smell blood, they attack."

Suede didn't want to run with a herd, though – and their second album, Dog Man Star, was deliberately anti-Britpop for that reason. "We didn't want to wave union jack flags. And I didn't want to talk about my life any more, or include any references about living in London on the dole. It felt weird how they became Britpop references, really, and how quickly they got turned into beery cartoons."

Anderson was also missing the departed Butler. "He's an amazing musician, so I missed him in that sense. And the two first Suede albums were obviously very special." Butler has played a big role in putting together the Best Of, Anderson says. "It was really nice: the two of us sitting together listening to Suede songs in the studio for the first time for nearly 20 years. A really lovely trip down memory lane." Anderson won't go into detail about their friendship, but thinks they made a good album together as the Tears, although they were naive not to realise how much the idea of their reconciliation being a de facto Suede reunion would overshadow it. Butler, though, will have no part of this reformation.

Instead, Suede's current lineup is centred around their most commercially successful spell, one that gets overlooked because of the excitement of their early breakthrough. 1996's Coming Up produced five top 10 singles, and also made Suede famous in Europe and Asia. They all remember that time fondly, Gilbert says: "It was make or break, but also really exciting. We were all waking up each morning not feeling any pressure." Things only went awry with 1999's Head Music. Codling was getting ill, and having to send ideas in by email; Anderson "was off my head on buckets of drugs"; Oakes, whose guitar parts were getting replaced by electronics, was "switching off", he says. "Which I really regret."

By 2002's A New Morning, the band had grown apart, and Anderson was trying to tear Suede's sound into pieces – partly, he now realises, because he didn't want there to be a band any more. "I think that we shouldn't have made that record, quite honestly." He persevered out of sheer bloody-mindedness – wanting to prove to the doubters, once again, that Suede hadn't been a flash in the pan. Instead, the band broke up amicably with a run of full-album gigs at London's ICA, which they nonetheless remember as quiet final flourishes. "We didn't go out the way we had planned," Osman says. "We should've gone out in a blaze of fists in Bangladesh, or something."

Quietness seems inimical to Suede: Anderson misses the danger and fierceness his band used to thrive on. "I do find it weird that the last 10 years hasn't thrown up a new definitive genre. It seems that music is here to placate now, rather than provoke. Maybe a sense of apathy has crept in, or people's lives are too comfortable. No one wants to inspire extremity, as we used to do."

Perhaps sticking around beyond the winter tour would help make this happen, I suggest. The room falls silent as the notion floats around. "At the moment … we don't know," Anderson says finally, making it clear he is the ringmaster. "I think we'd have to be convinced that it would be the right thing to do. You know, has the moment passed, or should we pick at the scab again?"

Next year, after all, he releases another solo record, a big rock-inspired album – although its energy has, he admits, been fuelled by Suede's reunion. And everyone agrees that something has changed in all of them in the wake of the reunion. "The fact it happened 20 years after the band formed – isn't that wonderful? Who's to say it couldn't happen again in the future?" Anderson raises his hands, and his cheekbones gleam in the evening light as it falls through the window. Everyone smiles, and understands. This isn't yesterday's man.

The Best of Suede is released on Ministry of Sound on 1 November.

[peakyblinders1919]

Giving and Recieving

“Arthur, Arthur!” You called urgently as you strode through the gym. You looked like a fish out of water, a petite women who people presumed had the squeak of a mouse. Your delicately curled hair and pretty clothing may have been responsible for this first impression of you too as you seemed to float right through the room past all the burly, rough men dressed in black. But you had the bite a tiger, men twice your size moving out of your way and tipping their hats towards you as you approached the ring where your boyfriend was currently beating someone to death.

You waited right outside, tugging on the rope slightly. This kind of scene didn’t scare you anymore, but it once did. The first time you ever witnessed what Arthur was truly capable of, you couldn’t get the red blood from your memory for weeks. Now it was almost second nature to ignore it and try your best to get it out of Arthur’s clothes when he came home.

But once again it had gone too far. You had been called away from your job at a dressmaker shop to attend to your trauma stricken boyfriend who only knew one way to relinquish his pent up anger.

“Arthur,” you called harshly, hoping your voice would cut through all the voices in his head and reach him. You gritted your teeth as he continued pounding the poor guy in the ring. You sighed, feeling the pressure rise as all the men around you waited. They all were relying on you to get him to stop. No one else had the effect on Arthur that you did, but that didn’t mean it was always effective.

“Arthur,” you said much more calmly, in a soothing voice. Most of the men around you calmed down too, many people argued your voice was like a spell that put any man into a trance. “Arthur, it’s me. I’m here.” You pleaded and slowly he stopped, his head looking back to see you standing there with a smile on your face.

“Come on,” you said, putting your hands out to take in yours. He glimpsed at the man, well body, on the floor now, motionless. Lifeless. He looked away quickly then as he straightened to a standing position, running his blood stained hand across his nose as he sniffled.

“Yeah, alright,” he finally said, moving away from the body.

You released a sigh of relief that he had finally stopped. You thanked a man to your left who held the rope for you so you could enter the ring. You cautiously walked around the body, trying to avoid it and the blood before you reached Arthur, now slumped over in a chair in the corner.

You bent down, taking his face freckled with crimson in your hands, forcing him to look at you because you knew he was ashamed.

“You’re ok, everything’s going to be ok.”

He looked into your eyes longingly, like they held all the answers he needed. You saw his start to water and he finally just nodded, agreeing you with in a flat voice. Then his shoulders started to shake and you embraced him more as he cried.

“Shh,” you said as he laid his head on your chest and you caressed his hair. “It’s ok. You're not there, you're not in France. Your home Arthur and they can’t hurt you anymore. Let’s go home.”

Dinner was sitting on the table, cold. You had spent nearly two hours cooking a decent meal for Arthur on your anniversary, and after sitting alone at the table for over an hour, you had left. You settled into a warm both, chain smoking followed by a drink every now and again to keep you from crying, or screaming, or thinking anything of the situation.

Arthur was on another bender, you knew it. Whether he was out fighting again or drinking himself into a slumber, you didn’t care enough to frantically call anyone you knew to try and find his whereabouts. If he had cared for you like you cared for him, he could have called to inform you he was going to be late,and maybe then you could have saved the food.

You were tried. Your body ached as you submerge yourself into the nearly boiling water. Your eyes were heavy and you had emotions building up inside of you, always having to be forced away for later because Arthur’s problems always seemed to hold a precedent over yours. When was enough enough? When was it your time to be cuddled instead of you cuddling him after another nightmare?

You couldn’t really understand where Arthur was coming from, never having been through the traumatic experience he had, but when was your giving ever going to turn into receiving?

The sound of the door shutting was enough to tell you that Arthur was home but you didn’t jump to greet him or ask him how his day was. You continued soaking, waiting for his calls of your name to fill the house as he looked for you.

He entered the bathroom soon after, causing you to roll your eyes slightly at him. He looked terrible, and you could only guess as to the reasons; cocaine, alcohol.

“Oh, honey, there you are.” He said relieved.

“Yes, here I am Arthur. Where were you?” You asked, as you got out of the tub, wrapping yourself in a towel and walking to the bedroom to get dressed.

He sighed as he lowered himself onto the bed. “I don’t want to talk about my night, I just want you to come lay with me.” He pouted at you.

“Let’s talk about my night then, huh? I cooked an amazing dinner for you tonight because you probably didn’t remember that tonight was our anniversary so you know what? After an hour of waiting for you I said ‘Fuck it, he’s not coming home. And I’m not going to go find him, or save him from whatever’s he’s gotten himself into this time.’”

“Oh, fuck, that was today. I knew there was something I was forgetting.” He said, earning a laugh in response. You shook your head, ruffling through the closet to get dressed and get your stuff.

“When are you going to save me Arthur?”

He looked at you confused, holding his aching head in his hands. “You don’t need saving.”

“I DO! Arthur, the fact that you can’t see that….I’ve spent so much time focusing on you I don’t have any to focus on myself. I don’t know who I’ve become, I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m strong, but I’m fragile whether people believe it or not I know I am. I break and I need someone to pick me back up and that just...not you.” You said, every word ripping through your soul and Arthur looked on at you with teary eyes.

“Y/N, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you felt like this.”

“It’s cause you never asked Arthur.”

“Y/N, I….”

You shook your head and threw at trunk on the bed, cutting him off. “This isn’t working for me Arthur, no matter how bad I want it to. I just think I need a break. We need the break to heal ourselves, and then maybe we’ll find each other when we’re whole again.” You said, giving him a lingering kiss on the cheek before walking out.

You tossed and turned a moment longer before surrendering to the morning sun and opening your eyes, sitting up in the bed that was now empty. You sighed, peeling yourself from the safety and warmth of the bed to walk downstairs.

“Morning.”

“Morning,” you said as you rounded the kitchen table, kissing the new man you were dating. After everything that had happened you told yourself you were going to enjoy the single life for awhile. You wanted to focus on you, but not even a month after the breakup you ran into an ex from your past and everything just seemed to click into place. He made you happy, he treated you right and was everything Arthur wasn’t. But there was still something...missing.

“What’re you reading?” You asked as you leaned against the sideboard with a cup of tea, watching him flip through the newspaper to meet your eyes.

“Just the news.”

Suddenly you were behind him, your eyes scanning the headlines when your heart skipped a beat. There was a picture of John Shelby, followed by the title Birmingham Local Gangster, and Hero, Dies. You gasped audibly, ripping the paper from his hands and reading it quickly, rereading. He was ambushed, at least 6 bullets hitting him square in the chest. There wasn’t much that could be done to save him. You knew it was gonna be the start of a war, and you couldn’t help but wonder how everyone was dealing with the loss. Especially Arthur.

“On his own fucking doorstep,” you muttered as you reread the article.

“What?”

Until then you had forgotten you weren’t alone. You peeled back the pages to stare at him. “Uh, nothing. I...I have to go.” You said abruptly, giving him a kiss and running out the door.

It was a short walk to the old Watery Lane house you used to reside in. Just standing outside brought back unwanted memories that made you want to cry and laugh at the same time. The guy you had just left wasn’t even on your mind anymore as you stepped forward and knocked on the door.

A disgruntled Arthur opened the door, eyes squinting into the light as a gruffly asked who was there. The smell of liquor hit you hard in the fae and his eyes were red, either from crying or the cocaine but this is honestly how you imagined he’d be dealing with it.

“Y/N?” He said shocked.

“Uh...hi.” You said, not having thought about what you would say, because frankly you didn’t think you’d make it this far.

“What are you doing here?”

“I saw it in the papers. I just wanted to see how you were doing, make sure you were ok.”

He grunted, working to open the door a little more and invite you in.

You felt right at home as you sat on the couch in the living room with a cup of tea in your hand that he had offered. It was almost like time hadn’t gone by since the last time you were in this room. The place was slightly a mess, another sign of just how well Arthur was coping on his own. A line of coke was on the table, you slightly happy to have been interrupting it.

He cleared his throat, running a hand across the scruff that had started to grow on his face as he forgot to shave. “So...uh how have you been Y/N?” He asked.

You shook your head. “Good, good. I’ve started designing dresses.” You said, cursing yourself. “Arthur, let’s skip the small talk, eh? Are you ok? Like...are you really ok?”

He stared off into the distance thinking about it, swirling around the cup filled his liquor.

“Arthur, it’s me. You can say anything.” You said in that tranquil voice people knew you for as you leaned forward and placed a soft hand on his knee. That’s when he’s shoulders caved and he started crying, you opening your arms for him. He nodded, moving into your open embrace. You played with his hair soothingly as he cried into you.

“He’s gone. Just gone.” He cried, not saying too much but just enough to start mourning John in the way he needed. Not through drugs and alcohol but by crying and reminiscing.

Reminiscing continued as you stayed there for hours, finally catching up after Arthur had confronted his feelings.

“I’m sorry for the way I treated you Y/N. You deserve better. You deserve everything. You had a life, you didn’t have to drop everything to come here today.”

“But I’m glad you did,” you said, taking his hand in yours and giving them a little squeeze. “Let’s try again Arthur.”

“Really?”

“Really, but this time it’s going to be 50-50. Deal?”

“I like those odds.” He said, leaning forward slightly to capture your lips in his.

[brajeshupadhyay]

How To Know If Your Own Doctor (Or A Doctor You Might See) Is A Quack

Last week, a group of medical professionals calling themselves America’s Frontline Doctors stood in front of the U.S. Supreme Court and insisted that hydroxychloroquine is a “cure” for the coronavirus despite medical studies to the contrary.

In addition to that claim about the anti-malarial drug, their press conference also pushed such potentially harmful misinformation as the idea that mask-wearing isn’t necessarily a good choice. A day later, Vice President Mike Pence reportedly met with the doctors.

As Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseases expert, has said repeatedly, there’s little concrete evidence that hydroxychloroquine is effective as a COVID-19 treatment ― even if President Donald Trump continues to promote it. Last month, the Food and Drug Administration warned against using hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus patients, following reports of “serious heart rhythm problems” and other health issues in those who received the drug.

Still, in part thanks to a retweet by the president, the doctors’ clip went viral. It racked up tens of millions of views, even in the face of a widespread effort by social media companies to remove the video and penalize some who shared it, including presidential son Donald Trump Jr.

What may have been more startling, though, was what the news media found out about Stella Immanuel, the doctor who led the press conference. Immanuel, who works as a primary care physician and pastor in Houston, doesn’t just believe hydroxychloroquine is a valid coronavirus treatment. She also believes that gynecological issues like endometriosis and cysts are caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches, that alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments and that gay Americans practice “homosexual terrorism.” Online, Immanuel hawks a prayer she claims can remove “generational curses” passed on from ancestors and transmitted through the placenta.

The fact that so many Americans may have fallen for claims made by Immanuel and the other doctors ― most of whom are only debatably “on the frontlines” of the COVID-19 crisis ― without knowing much about their backgrounds or possible political motives is deeply troubling to Lydia Kang, a practicing physician and co-author of “Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything.”

“I was incredibly fearful for the health of those people who would trust her for two reasons: Her thinking agreed with their own, and they were looking to a medical professional to substantiate their own beliefs,” Kang told HuffPost.

“Many people feed upon hope, which is important, but it can be frightening when that hope leads to believing things that could be incredibly harmful,” she said.

“It’s very depressing how easily Americans bought into [Dr. Stella] Immanuel’s message even knowing her history of bizarre claims.”

– David H. Gorski, a doctor and managing editor of the blog Science-Based Medicine

As unnerving as it was that so many Americans shared the video, it was actually a good thing that Immanuel has a history of using her platform to promote conspiracy theories, said David H. Gorski, a surgical oncologist and professor of surgery at Wayne State University School of Medicine. Gorski is also the managing editor of Science-Based Medicine, a medical blog that exposes non-scientific research and practices.

“The sex with demons and other claims provided the press a good ‘in’ to debunk and discredit her as a source,” he said. “If the astroturfers had chosen a less disreputable figure, it might have been more difficult to counter the message.” (Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization, whether it’s a political, religious or advertising group, to make it appear as though the message or group had organically sprung from grassroots efforts.)

That being said, Gorski added that “it’s very depressing how easily Americans bought into Immanuel’s message even knowing her history of bizarre claims.”

Still, the fact remains that Immanuel does have a full medical license in Texas, USA Today reported pointing to the Texas Medical Board’s online records. She told the board she has a primary specialty in pediatrics and a secondary specialty in emergency medicine. Her bizarre beliefs and the products she sells on her site may ― or, worse, may not ― come as a surprise to patients she’s had.

It makes you wonder: What kind of questionable beliefs might your doctor have that aren’t endorsed by the medical community ― and how can you dodge doctors like Immanuel the next time you’re in the market for a general practitioner or specialist?

Below, Gorski, Kang and other medical experts share how to tell if a doctor might be a quack.

A few signs your doctor may be pushing some dubious beliefs:

They sell their own supplements and treatments.

It’s a significant warning sign if a doctor puts their patients on unconventional mixes of medications and supplements, some of which they sell, Kang said.

“One major red flag is when a physician directly touts their own brand of medicines or supplements to take out of their own store,” she said. “It’s a serious conflict of interest.”

They rely on single-person testimonies, social media or TV endorsements rather than peer-reviewed data.

Many of the doctors we spoke to cited television’s Mehmet Oz and his show “Dr. Oz” as an example of a physician using their platform to hawk questionable treatments. Though Oz has an Ivy League medical degree, a 2014 study in the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal found that in 40 randomly selected episodes from Oz’s show, his health recommendations were based on evidence just 46% of the time.

If you’re concerned about your doctor making dubious health recommendations, ask yourself if their claims are supported by scientific evidence. In place of hard evidence, your doctor may claim they have anecdotal evidence that something works ― or that it’s been endorsed by this expert or that celebrity, including TV doctors. That’s not enough.

“Be wary if they mention social media endorsements or they talk about testimonials and single-patient stories,” said Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

Any doctor worth their salt should be citing peer-reviewed articles and scientific studies that rely on well-designed clinical trials, not patient anecdotes and their own personal experience, Caplan said.

SDI Productions via Getty Images

Be wary of doctors who promise a 100% cure rate or speak in absolutes. For instance, “all mainstream doctors have got it wrong on this subject.”

They say their treatment is a “miracle cure” with an unbelievably high success rate.

Be leery of a doctor who promises a 100% (or ridiculously high) cure rate. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is too good to be true, Gorski said. He used the example of certain clinics that claim they have a 90% cure rate for stage IV cancer.

They speak in absolutes.

Does your doctor tend to make sweeping generalizations or speak in absolutes? For example, “All mainstream doctors have it wrong” or “I’m the only one who can help you.” That’s another major red flag, Kang said.

“A good doctor will carefully weigh the pros and cons of any treatment, and are careful about promising anything as a ‘perfect fix,’” she explained.

When the treatment goes wrong, they blame the patient.

Because quack doctors often make overbroad claims about their treatments and products ― “it’s worked for everybody I’ve prescribed it to” ― any instances where the cure-all doesn’t work has to be the patient’s fault.

“They’ll usually blame failure of their treatment on the patient’s failure to adhere to their protocol closely enough,” Gorski said.

How to do your due diligence when selecting a doctor:

Look at rating sites with a healthy dose of skepticism.

To avoid a quack, Googling can be helpful, but stay skeptical when searching, Kang said. Be aware, for instance, that anyone can add a review on those health score websites where you see how many stars your doctor has, just like you would rate a restaurant on Yelp.

People can give a one-star or five-star rating without any proof as to “who they are, whether they actually saw the doctor, or how many times they vote,” Kang said.

Gorski suggested that Yelp-like sites rating medical professionals are inherently biased toward negative reviews.

“Patients should know that it is the very nature of rating sites that those who’ve had a negative experience will be more likely to want to post a review than those who’ve had a positive or at least acceptable or decent experience,” he said.

It’s often wiser to look at ratings put out by medical institutions themselves, Kang said, because they’re usually vetted to ensure that only patients who’ve seen the doctor vote and they vote only once.

Find out where they went to medical school and what they studied.

When sizing up a physician, especially a specialist, look up their credentials. Have they completed the proper training in their specific field?

“For example, a plastic surgeon without true training in plastics (via a residency and/or fellowship) or not board certified in plastic surgery would be a concern,” Kang said.

Coolpicture via Getty Images

When a doctor makes an interesting or surprising claim, check to see if it has garnered support from others in the medical community.

Check to see if their claims are supported by other doctors.

If you’re reading up on a treatment a doctor promotes online or elsewhere, look to see if it has garnered support from other doctors. Stay away if the doctor is making health claims outside of peer review and then marketing their product to laypeople.

“Look to see if they’ve published anything and be ready to get a second opinion if you have doubts,” Caplan said. “Are they a solo practice ― no peers checking them? Do they advertise and if so, are they making sweeping promises in their ads?”

If they have a social media presence, look to see what kind of information they’ve shared.

These days, many medical professionals have Twitter or Facebook pages where they comment on trending medical news. If your doctor has a public profile, read it to get a better feel for their beliefs, Kang said.

A quick Google search of Immanuel, the pastor-physician who led the press conference last week, would have pulled up her Twitter page, where she’s been tweeting about witchcraft and “21 day water fasts to demolish satanic embargo to our progress” since as far back as 2012.

Of course, not every social media page is going to be medically focused.

“Keep in mind, not all doctors tweet and Instagram about health topics alone,” Kang said. “They show their personal lives ― we are normal people, after all! we go on vacation and hang out in swimsuits sometimes! ― and political beliefs.”

But if a doctor is selling dubious products to their patients, they’re probably also posting about it, which allows you to weed that person out from the get-go.

<![CDATA[ !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,document,'script','https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');

fbq('init', '1621685564716533'); // Edition specific fbq('track', "PageView");

(function () { 'use strict'; document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function () { document.body.addEventListener('click', function(event) { fbq('track', "Click"); }); }); })(); ]]>

The post How To Know If Your Own Doctor (Or A Doctor You Might See) Is A Quack appeared first on Shri Times News.

via Blogger https://ift.tt/39W2yZD

[flauntpage]

A Long-Lost Tax Plan Scares Sports Teams and Could Save America Billions

America needs an intervention. And no, I'm not referring to the current occupant of the White House's media habits. I'm talking about our hopeless, helpless, hapless addiction to spending taxpayer money on sports stadiums. It's the public-policy equivalent of trading a perfectly good cow for a handful of magic beans—only in this case, the giant moves to Los Angeles for a bigger, better castle while we're stuck servicing the $144 million debt on our now-useless beanstalk.

Fortunately, I have just the idea: a 100 percent federal tax, paid for by sports teams, on all state and local spending designed to benefit them.

Perhaps that sounds excessive. Punitive, even. A hundred percent? When they set the Death Star to full power, it blew up an entire planet. Only that's the point. Because when it comes to giving billionaire team owners millions of dollars that they absolutely do not need—the better to construct glorified product showrooms that they otherwise could absolutely finance on their own, the same way every other business does—we're the nation that just can't quit, forever swearing that this time, things will be different.

Right after the next hit, of course.

In Georgia, they're spending more than $600 million on shiny new football and baseball stadiums to replace older, less shiny football and baseball stadiums that collectively cost taxpayers over $200 million in the 1990s. In Texas, they're forking over an estimated $500 million (and perhaps far more) for a baseball stadium with—take me in to the ballgame—air conditioning. In Nevada, a planned football stadium will be soaking up $750 million of subsidies, the largest-ever transfer of public cash to an NFL owner's private pockets, bigger than the $619 million spent on Indianapolis' Lucas Oil Stadium in 2008.

Even in California, spiritual home of the rehab clinic and a state where sober, right-thinking citizens said thanks but no thanks not once but twice to recent NFL efforts to pickpocket public coffers, taxpayers will be on the hook for as much as $160 million in tax breaks and other costs connected to the ongoing construction of a new stadium for the Rams and the Chargers.

According to Harvard University professor Judith Grant Long, Americans spent roughly $20 billion on 106 sports stadiums built between 1990 and 2010. And it isn't just state and local governments picking up the tab: according to a study from the Brookings Institution last year, the federal treasury has lost $3.7 billion in revenue since 2000 because the bonds used for stadium construction are tax-exempt. Which means that even if you hate the New York Yankees and live nowhere near the Bronx, you still helped contribute a whopping $431 million subsidy to the construction of the new Yankee Stadium.

Sports stadium welfare is a lousy investment at every level of the game; in fact, unless they're being paid by sports teams, most experts agree that cities hoping to stimulate their economies would be better off literally showering cash on the streets, Joker's parade-style.

Like the Wall Street bailouts, stadium subsidies socialize risk and privatize profit. When funded by sales taxes or local lotteries, they shift costs predominantly onto middle- and lower-class citizens. Even when municipalities try to pass the buck to non-locals by drawing on tourist or rental-car taxes, arena welfare still carries an enormous opportunity cost: every dollar spent on refurbishing Atlanta's Phillips Arena, for example, is a dollar not spent on schools or roads, or on cutting property taxes.

Still, we can't stop ourselves. In 2003, taxpayers in Glendale, Arizona, spent roughly $186 million on a new hockey arena—an amount that will climb to almost $224 million when construction bonds are fully paid off in 2033. The public has since coughed up roughly $70 million in additional operating costs, and cut the staffing of city departments to cover those expenses.

The payoff? Glendale now finds itself wrangling with the Arizona Coyotes over the team's desire for another taxpayer-financed building that's closer to where most of its local fan base lives.

When someone mentions a federal tax on stadium subsidies. Photo by Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Enter the silver bullet: the 100 percent federal tax. It was first proposed in a 1995 article written for the Minneapolis Federal Reserve by a pair of economists, Arthur Rolnick and Melvin Burstein, who recommended applying it to all local subsidies given to individual corporations—a policy that would have saved the public tens of billions of dollars in corporate welfare costs.

How would it work for sports? Simple. Suppose you're the Milwaukee Bucks, and suppose Wisconsin politicians give you between $250 and $400 million to build a new stadium. Under Rolnick and Burstein's plan, the Internal Revenue Service would subsequently hand you a tax bill for the exact same amount.

Just like that, sports stadium welfare would be dead and buried. No more promising to pay the Cincinnati Bengals for a future "holographic replay system" when you're already reeling from stadium debt service that figures to cripple your municipal budget for years. No more giving the Minnesota Vikings roughly $500 million for a new stadium—and then allowing the franchise to collect the money for the naming rights to a nearby parking garage, too.

"If you're the owner of the Vikings, why bother coming to the city or state for anything?" Rolnick told me in 2013. "You'll just have to turn it over to the federal government. Overnight, all of the bidding wars end. The [Cleveland] Browns never move to Baltimore. And the real beauty is that it's a tax you'll never have to collect.

"It was a simple idea. And it scared the hell out of [sports owners]."

Maybe it scares you, as well. After all, America is a representative democracy, a nation rooted in self-governance. Can't We, the People trust ourselves to make wise spending decisions? To stop coughing up half a billion dollars so the Miami Marlins can have a nicer office with brand-name art?

No. We, the People most certainly cannot. Team owners versus the general public is a one-sided fight, a classic example of concentrated gain taking precedence over diffuse pain. When you're an owner, a government-funded stadium is a once—well, maybe twice—in-a-lifetime opportunity that will save you hundreds of millions of dollars while boosting both your regular revenue and overall franchise value. By contrast, the price of said stadium is barely noticeable to any individual taxpayer: the aforementioned $3.7 billion in lost tax revenues Brookings found comes out to just $27 per each federal tax return filed in 2015.

Small wonder, then, that owners go to the wall for subsidies—and by "the wall," I mean the bank. In Texas, where citizens voted to fund half of a new $1 billion ballpark for the Rangers in November, the pro-stadium-subsidy group Vote Yes! Keep The Rangers raised a reported $617,707, mostly from the Rangers organization itself, and spent $564,479 in a single campaign reporting period leading up to Election Day. An opposing group, Citizens for a Better Arlington, raised a little less than $8,000 and spent $2,264 in the same time. That kind of disparity is hardly unusual: in Santa Clara, California, backers of a new stadium for the San Francisco 49ers spent almost $5 million in 2010 on a successful campaign to convince voters to create a public agency to own and finance the building, while an opposing group raised about $20,000.

"These guys are good," Rolnick told me in 2013. "They're really good. And it's an old problem. Look at the subsidies that go to farmers. Looks at the billions they get. You have a small number of people with a huge potential gain going against a large number of people with a small potential individual loss. Who is going to fight harder? That's what we're up against."

When you outspend your political opponents by a 250-1 margin. Photo by Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

Even when we take a long look in the mirror, resolve to stay clean and sober, and choose sparkling water with lime instead of funding a new San Diego Chargers stadium, there's another problem: we can't trust our duly elected representatives to do the right thing, either. Team owners know how to play them even better than the public, typically through a carrot-and-stick approach.

The stick? Threatening to decamp to another city. No local politician wants to be remembered as the Mayor Who Lost the Team—and plenty would love to be remembered for the opposite. Former Washington, D.C., Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly once described civic extortion by sports franchises as "a prisoner's dilemma of sorts." If no mayor gives in to the demands of a franchise shopping for a new home, she said, then the team will stay where they are. But if "Mayor A is not willing to pay the team's requested price, Mayor B may think it is advantageous to open up the city's wallet. Then to protect his or her interest, Mayor A often ends up paying the demanded price."

As for the carrot? Follow the money. For decades, Rolnick has traveled across the country, testifying in local hearings against sports stadium welfare. He comes alone, delivers a killjoy message, presents boring numbers. Meanwhile, teams enlist small armies of lawyers, lobbyists, public relations people, and fans. They make cheery, ludicrously Panglossian pitches: Give us $87.5 million for a new soccer stadium, and it will be the defining accomplishment of our generation, as well as something that will heal Charlotte's racial divisions. Build us a new football stadium, and annual tourism in Las Vegas will increase by 10 to 20 million people.

When the public hearings are over, Rolnick told me, those same team operatives work the offices and meeting rooms of the politicians involved. "If you're a governor, it's 'You build me an office tower, you build me a stadium, and next election, I'll be in your corner,'" he said. "There are big incentives to do this."

Given those incentives, it's hardly surprising that Cleveland's city council voted to spend $70 million to renovate a basketball arena—and then put the kibosh on citizens demanding a public referendum on the planned outlay. Or that local politicians in Cobb County, Georgia, approved a plan to spend at least $300 million on a new suburban Atlanta baseball stadium without any public debate, even standing in hallways to avoid a quorum and therefore get around the state's open-meetings laws. Or that city officials in Miami called a secretive midnight meeting to approve selling $500 million of bonds to fund a baseball stadium that will ultimately cost taxpayers $2.4 billion.

Can voters punish politicians for stupid spending after the fact? Of course. Cobb County Commission Chair Tim Lee lost his seat in a subsequent election, and Miami mayor Carlos Alvarez lost in the largest recall of any local politician in American history.

Problem is, accountability comes too late. The money's already gone. We need a law that will stop sports stadium welfare before it starts. And not legal half-measures. Those won't work. Never have. Sports owners aren't just rich and motivated. They're creative. With hundreds of millions at stake, they always find ways around limited efforts to stanch the public's financial bleeding.

To wit, in 1986, former Senator Pat Moynihan (D-NY) was able to close a loophole for federal tax-exempt private revenue bonds being used for stadium construction. What happened next? Sports teams began talking local governments into financing stadiums with tax-exempt general-purpose bonds that ultimately shifted more costs onto the public, producing the $3.7 billion price tag estimated by Brookings.

A decade ago, Seattle voters passed a law forbidding the city from financially helping sports teams unless the investment yields a profit for taxpayers on par with U.S. Treasury bond yields; as the Seattle Times explained, prospective NBA owner Chris Hansen nearly landed the Sacramento Kings by devising a clever way around the prohibition. Even state constitutions are no match: while Washington's plainly states that taxes "shall be levied and collected for public purposes only," in 1996 the state's Supreme Court ruled that the public could help pay for a new Seattle Mariners stadium.

Other ideas for stymieing stadium sports welfare have shortcomings. Missouri lawmakers have proposed making sports owners who relocate their teams to other states responsible for any stadium debt left behind, and Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) has considered proposing the same law on a national scale. It's a perfectly fine concept, but it fails to cover the total and totally unnecessary debt taxpayers take on in the first place.

Sports law professor Marc Edelman has suggested a federal law that would remove the Sports Broadcasting Act's limited antitrust exemption from any league where at least one team accepts public stadium funding without giving taxpayers a cut of the building's revenues. Again, that would be an improvement over the status quo, but it wouldn't prevent team owners from continuing to profit at the public's expense.

Pay to play. Photo by Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Rolnick's tax is different. It cuts to the heart of the matter, what Rolnick calls the "economic war among the states," in which companies create bidding wars between local governments by threatening to move their offices elsewhere. It's the dilemma described by former D.C. Mayor Kelly, and one that extends well beyond sports.

In fact, it was a 1991 effort by Minnesota–based Northwest Airlines to secure about $1 billion in subsidies that first piqued Rolnick's interest in this phenomenon. The company was in financial tatters. The state was in a recession. Rolnick did the math. The proposed deal was a lousy investment, so Rolnick advised against it, loudly and publicly. "Northwestern said, 'We'll create jobs,'" he said. "I said, 'All companies create jobs. If we do this for you guys, we could do this for anybody.' But that's not the government's role. We are supposed to build schools and roads. Not bail out companies."

Rolnick says a high-ranking state politician pulled him aside to explain what was really happening: This is about Northwest's headquarters. If we don't do it for these guys, they'll leave. And we'll lose jobs. When I spoke with Rolnick a few years ago, he was still incredulous.

"What happens is that from a national economic perspective, you get a zero-sum game," he said. "Not a single job created. You're just moving them around. So these subsidies make no economic sense. But at a local level, they're very seductive. You're a mayor, a governor, you attract a business like this, you get a win. But if you think about it like a war, you're just winning a battle. Then the next state or city comes along and bids below you.

"The sports teams are the best at playing this game by far. No pun intended. And my criticism isn't really against the CEOs or the owners of the teams. I would do the same if I was them. My criticism is of Congress. They can fix the rules of the game."

Therein lies the rub: historically, Congress has shown little appetite for fixing anything. When the Congressional Research Service released a 1996 report showing that tax-exempt bonds were costing the federal treasury about 34 percent of new stadium construction costs, Senator Moynihan introduced the Stop Tax-Exempt Arena Debt Issuance Act to rectify the matter. Local governments already committed to funding new projects—like a $292 million football stadium in Nashville—lobbied against the bill. It floundered. Three years later, former Vice President Joe Biden, then a Delaware Senator, co-sponsored a bill that would have required MLB and the NFL to pay up to 50 percent of construction costs for new stadiums. Again, no dice.

That same year, former Representative David Minge (D-MN) introduced a bill in the House that essentially would have made the Rolnick-Burstein proposal law. It died in committee. No one introduced a similar measure in the Senate. "[Former Minnesota Senator] Paul Wellstone wanted to introduce it," Rolnick said. "But Minge didn't want it to be a Minnesota bill. They got [Arizona Senator John] McCain's people interested in it. I had some very influential senators interested in it. But when they canvassed their colleagues, it didn't go anywhere.

"I think the sports teams got it killed. But if I had to do it again, I might have narrowed it to the sports teams. Because I think the public would get it. You need grassroots outrage over this stuff. We're closing schools. And we're going to build another stadium?"

Putting an end to sports stadium welfare—and the competitive conditions that lead to it—is eminently doable. The European Union has rules that successfully prevent inter-country bidding wars; so do the United States and Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

A Death Star federal tax would work. What's missing is the will to enact one. And ultimately, that's not the fault of anyone in Congress. It's on us—super fans and sports know-nothings alike, all of us taxpayers, unwilling or unable to admit that we have a bad habit. An addiction we simply can't kick on our own. Decades ago, former Senator Byron Dorgan (R-ND) joked that "the only remaining healthy public housing is in sports stadiums for wealthy team owners." It was, in the parlance of the recovery movement, a moment of clarity.

Want to read more stories like this from VICE Sports? Subscribe to our daily newsletter.

A Long-Lost Tax Plan Scares Sports Teams and Could Save America Billions published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[brajeshupadhyay]

Last week, a group of medical professionals calling themselves America’s Frontline Doctors stood in front of the U.S. Supreme Court and insisted that hydroxychloroquine is a “cure” for the coronavirus despite medical studies to the contrary. In addition to that claim about the anti-malarial drug, their press conference also pushed such potentially harmful misinformation as the idea that mask-wearing isn’t necessarily a good choice. A day later, Vice President Mike Pence reportedly met with the doctors. As Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseases expert, has said repeatedly, there’s little concrete evidence that hydroxychloroquine is effective as a COVID-19 treatment ― even if President Donald Trump continues to promote it. Last month, the Food and Drug Administration warned against using hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus patients, following reports of “serious heart rhythm problems” and other health issues in those who received the drug. Still, in part thanks to a retweet by the president, the doctors’ clip went viral. It racked up tens of millions of views, even in the face of a widespread effort by social media companies to remove the video and penalize some who shared it, including presidential son Donald Trump Jr. What may have been more startling, though, was what the news media found out about Stella Immanuel, the doctor who led the press conference. Immanuel, who works as a primary care physician and pastor in Houston, doesn’t just believe hydroxychloroquine is a valid coronavirus treatment. She also believes that gynecological issues like endometriosis and cysts are caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches, that alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments and that gay Americans practice “homosexual terrorism.” Online, Immanuel hawks a prayer she claims can remove “generational curses” passed on from ancestors and transmitted through the placenta. The fact that so many Americans may have fallen for claims made by Immanuel and the other doctors ― most of whom are only debatably “on the frontlines” of the COVID-19 crisis ― without knowing much about their backgrounds or possible political motives is deeply troubling to Lydia Kang, a practicing physician and co-author of “Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything.” “I was incredibly fearful for the health of those people who would trust her for two reasons: Her thinking agreed with their own, and they were looking to a medical professional to substantiate their own beliefs,” Kang told HuffPost. “Many people feed upon hope, which is important, but it can be frightening when that hope leads to believing things that could be incredibly harmful,” she said. “It’s very depressing how easily Americans bought into [Dr. Stella] Immanuel’s message even knowing her history of bizarre claims.” – David H. Gorski, a doctor and managing editor of the blog Science-Based Medicine As unnerving as it was that so many Americans shared the video, it was actually a good thing that Immanuel has a history of using her platform to promote conspiracy theories, said David H. Gorski, a surgical oncologist and professor of surgery at Wayne State University School of Medicine. Gorski is also the managing editor of Science-Based Medicine, a medical blog that exposes non-scientific research and practices. “The sex with demons and other claims provided the press a good ‘in’ to debunk and discredit her as a source,” he said. “If the astroturfers had chosen a less disreputable figure, it might have been more difficult to counter the message.” (Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization, whether it’s a political, religious or advertising group, to make it appear as though the message or group had organically sprung from grassroots efforts.) That being said, Gorski added that “it’s very depressing how easily Americans bought into Immanuel’s message even knowing her history of bizarre claims.” Still, the fact remains that Immanuel does have a full medical license in Texas, USA Today reported pointing to the Texas Medical Board’s online records. She told the board she has a primary specialty in pediatrics and a secondary specialty in emergency medicine. Her bizarre beliefs and the products she sells on her site may ― or, worse, may not ― come as a surprise to patients she’s had. It makes you wonder: What kind of questionable beliefs might your doctor have that aren’t endorsed by the medical community ― and how can you dodge doctors like Immanuel the next time you’re in the market for a general practitioner or specialist? Below, Gorski, Kang and other medical experts share how to tell if a doctor might be a quack. A few signs your doctor may be pushing some dubious beliefs: They sell their own supplements and treatments. It’s a significant warning sign if a doctor puts their patients on unconventional mixes of medications and supplements, some of which they sell, Kang said. “One major red flag is when a physician directly touts their own brand of medicines or supplements to take out of their own store,” she said. “It’s a serious conflict of interest.” They rely on single-person testimonies, social media or TV endorsements rather than peer-reviewed data. Many of the doctors we spoke to cited television’s Mehmet Oz and his show “Dr. Oz” as an example of a physician using their platform to hawk questionable treatments. Though Oz has an Ivy League medical degree, a 2014 study in the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal found that in 40 randomly selected episodes from Oz’s show, his health recommendations were based on evidence just 46% of the time. If you’re concerned about your doctor making dubious health recommendations, ask yourself if their claims are supported by scientific evidence. In place of hard evidence, your doctor may claim they have anecdotal evidence that something works ― or that it’s been endorsed by this expert or that celebrity, including TV doctors. That’s not enough. “Be wary if they mention social media endorsements or they talk about testimonials and single-patient stories,” said Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Any doctor worth their salt should be citing peer-reviewed articles and scientific studies that rely on well-designed clinical trials, not patient anecdotes and their own personal experience, Caplan said. SDI Productions via Getty Images Be wary of doctors who promise a 100% cure rate or speak in absolutes. For instance, “all mainstream doctors have got it wrong on this subject.” They say their treatment is a “miracle cure” with an unbelievably high success rate. Be leery of a doctor who promises a 100% (or ridiculously high) cure rate. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is too good to be true, Gorski said. He used the example of certain clinics that claim they have a 90% cure rate for stage IV cancer. They speak in absolutes. Does your doctor tend to make sweeping generalizations or speak in absolutes? For example, “All mainstream doctors have it wrong” or “I’m the only one who can help you.” That’s another major red flag, Kang said. “A good doctor will carefully weigh the pros and cons of any treatment, and are careful about promising anything as a ‘perfect fix,’” she explained. When the treatment goes wrong, they blame the patient. Because quack doctors often make overbroad claims about their treatments and products ― “it’s worked for everybody I’ve prescribed it to” ― any instances where the cure-all doesn’t work has to be the patient’s fault. “They’ll usually blame failure of their treatment on the patient’s failure to adhere to their protocol closely enough,” Gorski said. How to do your due diligence when selecting a doctor: Look at rating sites with a healthy dose of skepticism. To avoid a quack, Googling can be helpful, but stay skeptical when searching, Kang said. Be aware, for instance, that anyone can add a review on those health score websites where you see how many stars your doctor has, just like you would rate a restaurant on Yelp. People can give a one-star or five-star rating without any proof as to “who they are, whether they actually saw the doctor, or how many times they vote,” Kang said. Gorski suggested that Yelp-like sites rating medical professionals are inherently biased toward negative reviews. “Patients should know that it is the very nature of rating sites that those who’ve had a negative experience will be more likely to want to post a review than those who’ve had a positive or at least acceptable or decent experience,” he said. It’s often wiser to look at ratings put out by medical institutions themselves, Kang said, because they’re usually vetted to ensure that only patients who’ve seen the doctor vote and they vote only once. Find out where they went to medical school and what they studied. When sizing up a physician, especially a specialist, look up their credentials. Have they completed the proper training in their specific field? “For example, a plastic surgeon without true training in plastics (via a residency and/or fellowship) or not board certified in plastic surgery would be a concern,” Kang said. Coolpicture via Getty Images When a doctor makes an interesting or surprising claim, check to see if it has garnered support from others in the medical community. Check to see if their claims are supported by other doctors. If you’re reading up on a treatment a doctor promotes online or elsewhere, look to see if it has garnered support from other doctors. Stay away if the doctor is making health claims outside of peer review and then marketing their product to laypeople. “Look to see if they’ve published anything and be ready to get a second opinion if you have doubts,” Caplan said. “Are they a solo practice ― no peers checking them? Do they advertise and if so, are they making sweeping promises in their ads?” If they have a social media presence, look to see what kind of information they’ve shared. These days, many medical professionals have Twitter or Facebook pages where they comment on trending medical news. If your doctor has a public profile, read it to get a better feel for their beliefs, Kang said. A quick Google search of Immanuel, the pastor-physician who led the press conference last week, would have pulled up her Twitter page, where she’s been tweeting about witchcraft and “21 day water fasts to demolish satanic embargo to our progress” since as far back as 2012. Of course, not every social media page is going to be medically focused. “Keep in mind, not all doctors tweet and Instagram about health topics alone,” Kang said. “They show their personal lives ― we are normal people, after all! we go on vacation and hang out in swimsuits sometimes! ― and political beliefs.” But if a doctor is selling dubious products to their patients, they’re probably also posting about it, which allows you to weed that person out from the get-go. fbq('init', '1621685564716533'); // Edition specific fbq('track', "PageView"); (function () { 'use strict'; document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function () { document.body.addEventListener('click', function(event) { fbq('track', "Click"); }); }); })(); ]]> The post How To Know If Your Own Doctor (Or A Doctor You Might See) Is A Quack appeared first on Shri Times News.

http://sansaartimes.blogspot.com/2020/08/how-to-know-if-your-own-doctor-or.html