About the case I discussed earlier where a young woman received extensive services for eye inflammation, Ben England writes,

Activist care in an academic setting is a little different than activist care in general. To be trained as a physician in a high tech setting, one must learn to use the tools available. This includes working up a lot of low probability cases (most of which will yield negative results) in order to get a feel for the best utility of the test, understanding normals, and putting clinical findings in context.

…Instead of raging against the system, I think she should pause for a second and think very deeply about how incredibly lucky she was. She could have very easily lost her vision or worse, and much of the rest of the world would kill for all the resources at her disposal. To be honest, in a couple of generations, we may look back and be thinking the same thing.

For Discussion. Read England’s entire piece and comment.