A Salutary -- if a bit long -- Read

[longhoc]

I came across this article while doing the day job. It's not directly related to Keratoconus but it does touch upon themes which are relevant to those of us with the condition. Because we rely on the medical profession and its suppliers we're profoundly dependent on every link in the healthcare chain to act with complete integrity at all times. While the incident detailed in the piece is certainly not common, it's by no means unheard of either.

http://mathbabe.org/2012/02/15/how-big- ... t-disease/

While the author does rather play on the "big bad pharmaceutical company" side of the story, it's a case in point about how easy it is to let wishful thinking cloud one's judgement and overlook the absence of a good standard of proof for a particular treatment's safety and effectiveness. And how one-sided the relationship between patient and healthcare provider is. An interesting contrast is the way in which a mass-market drug can quickly have exposed an underlying low incidence side effect -- simply because the numbers of patients is an order of magnitude higher. Any Keratoconus treatment might not have that luxury.

Cheers

Chris