Terrible title but important issue: “Arrogant doctors criticize their patients who go online to research ailments. But they’re wrong. The best health sites are a boon to patients and doctors alike.

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A 2004 study showed that almost two-thirds of patients would like to have Internet information provided to them by their doctor. In contrast, a 2001 study of doctors showed that barely half of them encouraged their patients to go online (although the trend has been increasing over time), and 80 percent actually warned them against doing so.

In one regard, this is simply bad business. Pew tells us that patients either fire doctors unwilling to help them with the Web or keep going online without telling them. More important, when patients do venture online themselves, they can sink into a swamp of outdated medical studies, confront a lot of misinformation, and risk creating a rift in the doctor-patient relationship.” (Salon) I’m not sure arrogance exactly captures it. Certainly, there are insufferably arrogant MDs, but I am not sure they are those most threatened by their patient’s use of Google. Insecurity is more to teh point. The old model of the medical profession as an esoteric priesthood guarding secret knowledge should have long since given way to a collaborative model empowering patients, but many physicians do not realize it.