“Cancer, Then a Calling” – profile in Technology Review

In September, MIT Technology Review did a month-long series on the era of e-medicine. The last item was a profile of my transition from patient to change advocate, Cancer, Then a Calling. Free registration required.

MIT being MIT, and technology being technology, the column focuses a lot on the “gimme my damn data” aspect: I firmly believe that as consumer/patients are increasingly left to fend for ourselves in an unaffordable system, we must have full access to our (and our children’s) medical records. How else can we make informed decisions??

“Oy vey” troll alert: Somehow this piece has again attracted “StanfordDoc,” an internet troll who trashed me in a comment on another post somewhere. He/she/it has returned with a freshened complaint, beginning:

“So a naive older patient googled his illness and didn’t understand the prognosis and got so anxious his doc sent him to an online support group.. Hmmm very empowered.”

The comment gets better from there, full of opinion and unconstrained by reality.  (Anyone who’s seen my talks live or on video knows the comment’s largely wrong – I was indeed naive, and I googled, and I was anxious, and my doctor sent me to ACOR.org – but there was no connection, and I absolutely did understand the prognosis.)

It’s an honor to be dissed by a misinformed arrogant person, especially one who claims to be a doctor.:-)

Anyway, whoever it is, this time his/her comment is titled “Hypochondirac [sic] meets Google.” I struck back, in a minimalist/troll-whacking way. :-)
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Hats off to TR business editor Antonio Regalado, who produced this column under the worst of circumstances. In the midst of my crazed September travels, when I didn’t have time to go meet with him, he agreed to come to me in Boston on a rainy Friday night after my wife picked me up at the airport. We stopped for dinner en route home; he met us and did the interview, recording it in a very noisy background. He edited it down, and last week while I was wrapped up overseas he managed to get the fact-check review out of me anyway, and get it through production and released on Friday.

I know first-hand that it takes work to write reliably on a single subject, let alone the range of topics business journalists have to cover – not to mention that they have to do it on deadline. Thanks, Antonio – well done.