“My doctor just said, she doesn’t know of any evidence” is a summary of a conversation happening in German.
I think the exact wording was something like “Es gibt dafür keine Evidenz. Ist gibt nur etwas für einen schwachen Effekt für Echinacea”. I’m less certain for the wording for the second sentence.
I don’t speak German, so I can’t tell if the German has different connotations than the English. But in general, on technical or obscure matters, unless someone is either in the Rationalist sphere or else a very competent expert in a very specific area, it’s usually prudent to interpret claims that there is no evidence as claims that the person doesn’t know of any evidence unless they specifically claim to have seriously looked, and not found any, quite recently.
Also, IDK how medical practice in Germany (if that’s where you are) differs from the US, but in the US doctors are expected to mostly stick to best practices arrived at by people and institutions that aren’t themselves. They’re allowed to diverge from that based on their own professional judgment, and sometimes do, but it opens them up to more risk of liability, so many are hesitant to do so. I see that, too, as an impediment to personalized medicine.
German is a bit different in that German culture does value sophistication. Zizek mentions that we traditionally build our toilets specifically so that the shit doesn’t directly into the water to be better able to inspect it. Under the post-World War II occupation we did switch to British toilets.
In the US you put fluoride in the drinking water, in German supermarkets you have pure salt, next to salt + iodine, next to salt + iodine + fluoride so that everyone can make a choice about what to consume (of course there also the additional choice of the source of sea salt with salt mine salt) .
Malpractice lawsuits do exist but they are less in number and the payouts are lower.
Interesting about the fluoride. This all makes sense—AFAIK the US is an outlier on having lots of high profile lawsuits about things.
FWIW you can buy regular non-iodized salt in US supermarkets. You need it for things like pickling and canning, since iodine causes some sort of problems (I’m not sure of the details).
“My doctor just said, she doesn’t know of any evidence” is a summary of a conversation happening in German.
I think the exact wording was something like “Es gibt dafür keine Evidenz. Ist gibt nur etwas für einen schwachen Effekt für Echinacea”. I’m less certain for the wording for the second sentence.
I don’t speak German, so I can’t tell if the German has different connotations than the English. But in general, on technical or obscure matters, unless someone is either in the Rationalist sphere or else a very competent expert in a very specific area, it’s usually prudent to interpret claims that there is no evidence as claims that the person doesn’t know of any evidence unless they specifically claim to have seriously looked, and not found any, quite recently.
Also, IDK how medical practice in Germany (if that’s where you are) differs from the US, but in the US doctors are expected to mostly stick to best practices arrived at by people and institutions that aren’t themselves. They’re allowed to diverge from that based on their own professional judgment, and sometimes do, but it opens them up to more risk of liability, so many are hesitant to do so. I see that, too, as an impediment to personalized medicine.
German is a bit different in that German culture does value sophistication. Zizek mentions that we traditionally build our toilets specifically so that the shit doesn’t directly into the water to be better able to inspect it. Under the post-World War II occupation we did switch to British toilets.
In the US you put fluoride in the drinking water, in German supermarkets you have pure salt, next to salt + iodine, next to salt + iodine + fluoride so that everyone can make a choice about what to consume (of course there also the additional choice of the source of sea salt with salt mine salt) .
Malpractice lawsuits do exist but they are less in number and the payouts are lower.
Interesting about the fluoride. This all makes sense—AFAIK the US is an outlier on having lots of high profile lawsuits about things.
FWIW you can buy regular non-iodized salt in US supermarkets. You need it for things like pickling and canning, since iodine causes some sort of problems (I’m not sure of the details).