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As a doctor I have a brief moment of sympathy with this idea - I've seen far too many patients badly mislead by "Dr Google" - but ultimately I think it is important to provide clear, helpful, and well-targeted health information online for the layperson.

Of course there's no incentive for WebMD to do this, they just want clicks on ads. But in Australia our governments publish a fair bit of helpful health information online, and I do often print some of it out for my patients when they go home. Sometimes it's not enough in itself, but it's great for a "you've got X, here's some info about it" situation.

UpToDate is the medical-grade, actually helpful, for professionals only, quite expensive "Wikipedia for Medicine", I use it every day, among a few other resources. But it's not something you can just open up and use - it's very much designed to be used by people with the right background knowledge - you need to know how to find what you want, and you need to know how to use what you find.



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