Iatrogenic: Difference between revisions

Iatrogenic (view source)

Revision as of 09:18, 10 November 2020

4 bytes added , 10 November 2020

no edit summary

Amwelladmin

Bureaucrats, Interface administrators, Administrators

82,891

edits

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{{g}}A side-effect. An [[iatrogenic]] illness is not one that the cure is worse than, but that the cure actually ''causes''. Popularised by {{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}} in {{br|Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder}}, one can gleefully extrapolate it to many other walks of life, and service industries. So, Night Nurse  may cause drowsiness and you shouldn’t drive tractors or operate photocopiers when dosed up on it, but at least it doesn’t make your head cold alleviate ''worse''. Many forms of medical procedure can do this: antibiotics, for example, encourage bacteria to develop resistance to the antibiotics making your original problem harder to solve.
+{{g}}A side-effect. An [[iatrogenic]] illness is not one that the cure is worse than, but that the cure actually ''causes''.
-There is a peculiar form of [[iatrogenic]]s, where, without the (mis)diagnosis, the body would recover and there would be no illness at all. This is why the “six second rule” isn’t quite the careless outrage the helicopter mums of North London imagine. It may be ''false'', but allowing dear little [[Basil Fotherington-Thomas|Basil]] to ingest constant, small, amounts of bacteria — rather than nuking young sir’s entire theatre of operations with Dettol before he lays as much as a sticky finger on it — encourages his antifragile body to develop its own immunities to the bacteria, so you don’t ''need'' so much anti-septic.
+So, Night Nurse{{tm}} may cause drowsiness and you shouldn’t drive tractors or operate photocopiers when dosed up on it, but at least it doesn’t make your head cold ''worse''. Many forms of medical procedure can do this: antibiotics, for example, encourage bacteria to develop resistance to the antibiotics making your original problem harder to solve. Antibiotics are, in this way, [[iatrogenic]]. Long term, they make your problem worse.
+This is why the “six second rule” isn’t quite the careless outrage the helicopter mums of North London imagine. It may be ''false'', but allowing dear little [[Basil Fotherington-Thomas|Basil]] to ingest constant, small, amounts of bacteria — rather than nuking young sir’s entire theatre of operations with Dettol before he lays as much as a sticky finger on it — encourages his antifragile body to develop its own immunities to the bacteria, so you don’t ''need'' so much anti-septic.
+Popularised by {{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}} in {{br|Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder}}, one can extrapolate [[iatrogenic]]s to many other walks of life, in particular those involving service industries, and it is rather fun to do so.
 ===Insurance===
 This is rather like [[insurance]]. For most purposes, [[insurance]] is a waste of money — realistically, you are never going to claim on your extended warranty if your toaster breaks down after 18 months because (a) you can’t find it and (b) ''the damn thing only cost twenty five quid'' — the bother of having to find the stupid warranty, read it — there is ''guaranteed'' to be some exclusion — and actually claim on it is more bother than just shelling out twenty five more quid on a ''new'' toaster — of a different brand: screw you, Morphy Richards — and being done with it.