HootahMan

For two thousand years the settled treatment for almost any illness was to open a vein and drain the patient. In 1799 it helped see off George Washington. 1847: Semmelweis showed handwashing took childbed deaths from one in six to almost none. Insulted, his colleagues ran him out, and he died in an asylum. 1900s: they sold radium as a health tonic and fitted children's shoes by X-ray in the shop. Then the jaws and the feet started to rot. 1949: they gave the Nobel Prize in Medicine to the lobotomy. A decade later it was a byword for butchery. 1950s: they prescribed thalidomide to pregnant women and swore it was gentle. Then the babies arrived. 1960s: they whipped out millions of children's tonsils on sight. Then they checked, found most never needed it, and stopped. Every one of those was the settled science of its day. The journals, the committees, the experts, and a special contempt for the doubters. Every one moved. So look at what carries that same certainty now. A statin for every middle-aged adult. An acid blocker for life. An antidepressant in a ten-minute slot. A weight-loss jab you must never come off. All of it said in the same confident voice. Backed by the same kind of committee. The doubters have a better track record than the consensus does. They always have.