Author: Foot Doc
Date: 5/15/2007 9:35 am PDT
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I have said over and over again that there is nothing wrong with relating personal experiences. The problems occurs (and they most always do), when someone offers his or her experiences and couches such information as a response to a particular questioner's issue, often a complication or side effect, and tacitly or otherwise implies that such is the norm or that his or her complication or side effect is necessarily the same as the questioners and that whatever was done or wasn't done for it bears directly on the questioners situation. I have just pointed out as to how a poster, though well-meaning, can give a response which, if taken as fact, could be detrimental to the readers and in particular, the questioner. Not even with the decades of experience which I have had in performing foot surgery will I make a definitive recommendation on any specific individual case about which someone asks a question, unless the fact are so exclusively characteristic of a common problem that I can feel comfortable doing so. That, however, is not something that a lay poster can determine, and any recitation of personal experiences should be clearly identified as only that, and there should be no attempt to state or imply that such an experience can be taken by the questioner to relate to his or hers. Medicine and medical procedures can hurt as well as cure, and what is good for one situation may be a disaster for another. |
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