Electronic wonderland

CMAJ 2000;162:1663

It's the year 2015. With the exception of trauma specialists, doctors no longer exist. As research findings are immediately available to the public via the Internet and the news media, everyone knows what pills to take. Pharmacists are allowed to dispense medications directly to an informed public.

The process of delicensing the occupation of physician began when doctors started making treatment decisions on the basis of abstracts found in MEDLINE rather than after reading and evaluating complete articles for themselves. From there, the capsule comments and notations provided by e-publishers became the sum total of doctors' reading, making them basically equivalent to the general public. As a superior intellect and vast medical knowledge were no longer necessary to practise medicine, universities decertified most medical programs, with the exception of surgery -- although there are now electronic resources guaranteed to provide a lay person with enough knowledge and guidance to perform creditably in any cyber-equipped operating room.

Everyone is happy — although there is some suspicion that this may be the result of the pills everyone is now taking for general well-being as found on the Net.

Gord Lindsay
Toronto, Ont.

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1. Singer PA. Medical journals are dead. Long live medical journals. CMAJ 2000;162(4):517-8.

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