When Slack's infant grandson developed diabetes, the child's parents spent months sorting through conflicting advice from different doctors. Not every doctor is so enthusiastic. Privacy issues, for instance, emerge at every turn, and doctors who communicate with patients via computer wonder whether e-mail qualifies as part of the medical record. The Consumer Health Information Research Institute, a Kansas-based antifraud group, chose that site as one of the 10 worst on the Web. But computer links provide almost immediate access to an unprecedented amount of raw medical information, and there is no online Food and Drug Administration to police it.
Tools do exist to make quality control easier.
With the help of a well-credentialed advisory board, she and her staff evaluate the accuracy, balance, and timeliness of hundreds of nutrition sites. Even patients who use tools like the Nutrition Navigator may get a cool reception when they arrive at the doctor's office with a pile of printouts. Today, that attitude hasn't changed completely. Though some doctors accept and even embrace the notion of the well-informed patient, others hold on to the old way of thinking, and would rather control the kind of information that gets into their patients' hands. Some doctors still say that today.