Dr. Joseph Fraiman

And the reality, though, of this is if people did understand the risks, the benefits, the harms, they would generally,

not take most medications.

They would not get most procedures.

They would probably not get many screening tests if they understood the harms and the benefits of all of these things.

And instead, what we have is a system that says, you take this, we recommend this.

It's very paternalistic.

And medical ethics has very much been clear for years that we say that autonomy is actually one of our, is our first principle.

um public health i looked into this public health does not have the same medical the same ethics as the medical profession they do not um have autonomy as one of their uh pillars uh and they and so they are like believe that it is okay to um be misleading

in order to get the improved health outcome.

And that is like, it's very antagonistic actually to the way of the medical profession, which says we allow you to make bad decisions.

Our job is, what I always say to my patients is that, I said, my expertise is in medicine and I can give you the information, but you're the expert in your body.

You are the expert of your body and you have to choose based on this information what you think is best for you.

And I believe these federal recommendations, the government recommendations are not when they make these bold things, especially a mandate.

That's a really wild one.

But even our guidelines and then we're stuck actually with these guidelines that are various physician associations.

where i believe it's quite questionable uh these these guidelines and where they come from right even sometimes there are pharmaceutical industry funded people on there but which we say okay that's questionable but even even if you consider the people on these associations are the specialists themselves right where you would want that expertise of course but they also make money based on what you recommend what they recommend if they reckon you know if you're um

If you're a prostate cancer surgeon, you're going to recommend people get prostate cancer screening.

And that is a questionable thing.

It's controversial.

For the most part, people would say shared decision making would be the best way.