A recent ad campaign by the DDB Brussels agency was launched to protect Belgians from potential misdiagnoses of health symptoms. The ads encourage Belgians to stop entering their ailments into Google and other search engines to come up with possible causes.
DDB Brussels took the campaign a step further. The company found the most commonly-Googled health symptoms, and bought ads that pop up every time someone researched a symptom. One message that pops up: "Don't Google it, check a reliable source."
Art Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at the Langone Medical Center, liked the campaign.
"You gotta be wary of what's out there on the internet," Caplan said Friday on Boston Public Radio. "I'm a little bit nervous about the, 'I have a little bit of a fever, I wonder if I have Ebola?', and the site is one that's going to sell you the natural cure to Ebola."
Caplan didn't write off web self-diagnosis entirely, however. "I think it's fine if you've got some kind of weird-looking growth and you want to look it up, and they show you a picture of a melanoma, and say, 'If it looks like this you better see someone right away.' That's okay." Caplan said web advocacy for things like flu and shingles shots were fine, too.
Boston Public Radio cohost Margery Eagan said her browsing habits always led to the worst-case scenario. "You always wind up with a massive tumor someplace in your body, and then [you] get hysterical, needlessly," Eagan said.
"I was almost late for this segment with you today (...) because I was doing what I [do] every morning, which is typing in my daily symptoms into Google and seeing what I had," Boston Public Radio Jim Braude joked.
>> To hear the entire conversation with Art Caplan, click the audio above.
