14 DAY TRIAL // Doctors and physicians around the world are currently in the middle of an effort to force the Google giant search engine to enforce more strict control on the pages it indexes, so as to limit the number of people who suffer excruciating pain every year, after searching online for cures and ending up on sites that sell fake pills. In addition, pages that make misleading claims should also be removed from Google's indexes, the doctors uphold, for the sake of the individuals who have no way of knowing which website is legitimate and which one is a fake.
In a study published on March 20th in the online edition of the journal BMJ, a group of medics urges Google to strengthen its search filters for at least common medical searches. One of the physicians in the group, University of Florence health expert Dr Marco Masoni, shares that he entered the word “aloe” in the search box on Google and hit the “Search” button.
His query returned web pages that told visitors that the substance was good at preventing cancer, and offered it up for sale. Everyone knows that aloe can't cure this disease, but desperate people would gladly try anything that could save their loved ones from a slow death. And they would pay good money for it too.
“We think that a necessary first step for Google is to improve its filters and algorithms so as to prevent possible harm to its users,” the signers of the BMJ article maintain, adding that this is especially important now, when the American search engine has announced that it plans to enter the health care arena with several dedicated problems.
The doctors tell that the web pages Google returns have to be 100 percent accurate, as people's lives are literally at stake. A growing number of individuals prefers not to visit the doctor and searches for the cure it needs online, with complete disregard of its own safety.
“We are experiencing a health care reformation. The Internet has brought the canon of medical knowledge into the hands and homes of ordinary people, and this should be welcomed and encouraged as good for patients and doctors alike,” NHS Direct representative Joanne Shaw writes in another article in the same journal. She explains that the fact that people are now able to directly access all medical information they desire is actually very helpful.
This may be the case, but the fact that they visit various fake medical websites when they use Google should not be ignored. The doctor group does not advocate the complete removal of all medical content from the search engine, but rather that a more thorough procedure be established for this type of searches.