Comment by phil21 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by phil21 | Hacker News Reader

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Why treat doctors as infallible? Do you bring your car to the mechanic and blindly trust what they have to say?

Doctors are no better or worse than any other profession out there. 80% of doctors are pretty bad, and the other 20% make the rest look decent. Just like any profession that has ever existed.

You should be double-checking absolutely every single thing a doctor is telling you - especially important things like giving a two year old psychiatric meds that are not approved by the FDA.

I do agree with your point that it's not the parents "fault" - but I also would be pretty upset with my parents if they blindly followed whatever advice some guy with a piece of paper told them.

Couldn't agree more. I even think that some doctors care less about patients than mechanics care about cars.

Trusting a professional's recommendation is not treating them as infallible, it's called "using the advice you paid for". No I don't blindly trust my mechanic, you shouldn't blindly trust anyone but generally when you seek out a professional's opinion on something it's because you value their expertise.

> You should be double-checking absolutely every single thing a doctor is telling you

Right, because the average person who knows next to nothing on mental health is going to make a better judgement call on which medication to prescribe their child than their doctor.

Guess what, if that were the case we wouldn't have a story here.

Right, because the average person who knows next to nothing on mental health is going to make a better judgement call on which medication to prescribe their child than their doctor.

Often, yes, the person who cares about the child more than about themselves will make a better decision than a doctor who has 300 more random kids to check that week.

Now, it depends on how that double-checking is done. The simplest way is to get a second (and third, and fourth) opinion, and then judging based on them all.

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