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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Credentials, State vs. private
Message-ID: <760@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Sep-85 15:44:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.760
Posted: Tue Sep 17 15:44:29 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Sep-85 05:37:49 EDT
References: <4297@alice.UUCP> <1565@umcp-cs.UUCP> <126@l5.uucp>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 46

In article <126@l5.uucp> laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton) writes:
> In article <1565@umcp-cs.UUCP> mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) writes:
> >The problem with this is that in fact people aren't well enough informed to
> >judge in general, and that changes in reputation generally lag changes in
> >actuality considerably, often being completely unrelated to reality.  A
> >person living in rural Tennessee often does not have the resources available
> >to find out whether the slick young man is really from Harvard, as he claims
> >to be.
> 
> Okay, it sounds to me like there is a market for doctor-verification here.
> The prospective patients will want this and the doctors will want this a
> great deal. So someone will set up a doctor-verification agency. (Actually,
> it will probably be more general than just doctor verification -- in 
> Libertaria this problem is going to crop up again and again.) It will
> be constrained to be honest by the same constraints that make the AMA
> (or Consumer Reports, or a high-minded public official) honest -- because
> it will be staffed by people who are genuinely concerned with the problem,
> because it will be staffed by people who are honoroable, because it will
> loose all its customers if it prints lies and because people will sue it
> for fantastic sums of money if it doesn't.

I don't think this would work for the majority of people, and I think
Charley is right, popular judgement about medicine is unrealistic.
Consider diet plans for example.  They are unregulated.  Is there a diet-plan
verification agency (public or private)?  Well, there's no shortage of
sound medical advice about the dangers of diet plans, and what works. 
Do people heed it?  No.  They need only ask their doctors, but instead
they prefer to dream, and make the diet industry one of the largest food-
related industries in America.

Why are people so foolish?  Got me.  However, they are bombarded with
outrageous advertising claims continually.  And it doesn't pay anyone to
advertise that something doesn't work.

Remove the restrictions on medical practice, and you open up a huge can
of worms of this sort.  People will choose the quack who makes them feel
best about their medical service; because he tells them "yes, take that
drug", because he makes outrageous claims for their health if they follow
his advice, because he tells them their aura gets better and better every
time they visit.  And how could anyone sue for malpractice, without some
implicit standard of medical practice?  "You didn't diagnose that cancer!"
"That wasn't a cancer, it was an evil spirit, and the patients will wasn't
strong enough.  I can't cure everybody."
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh