Mr. Mathes said he later told the woman in a private e-mail that the exams were necessary to prevent kidney damage. He also recommended that she seek advice from a pediatric urologist. Defenders are quick to point out that not all discussion groups are bad. Brooks S. Edwards, MD, a cardiologist and medical director of Mayo Clinic Health Oasis, Mayo's Web site, said that physicians should tell their patients to use caution when obtaining information from the Internet. There is some wonderful information available, and at the same time there is dangerous information.
Users have to exercise caution to know that the information they are receiving is reliable.
In 1995, an international conference of some of the world's leading Internet, Web and telemedicine experts created the Foundation and its voluntary code of standards, which is now one of the more popular seals for health care Web sites. Sites that subscribe to the HON standards can display the seal on their pages. In part, the HON standards say that only medical professionals should dispense health advice at Web sites or that there should be full disclosure if nonprofessionals are supplying the information. The standards also say the data revealed on the site should be kept confidential and that, when possible, data on the site should be linked directly to source data. While the HON standards are viewed as a model of Web site seals, not all standards are quite so high.