Too Many Experts in My Life
I got this email recently. It dealt with my prostate cancer.
Spend some money. Go to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. They are the premier > facility for treating PC. Or, go to MD Anderson in Houston.All this other "stuff" you have in mind is nuts. I agree about the chemo for now but cancer is a bio process. You have a better chance with the two units above. Check out JH success rates. Run the numbers.
The tone of this self-appointed expert is common. I have been getting letters like this from people like this for well over 40 years.
Let me show you what anyone who has spent some time studying anything thinks of emails or communications like this. I want you to be able to understand the inescapable reaction of the recipient. He reads the letter as follows.
Boy, you don't know what you're talking about. So, you need my help. I am an expert. I have spent 15 minutes of research on Google, and I am here to tell you that you are way behind the curve.
I know all about these matters. I'm not a physician, but I don't need to be a physician. I spent 15 whole minutes searching on Google.
You say you have been looking at this problem and its solution for over 40 years. Well, 40 years don't cut it in my book, Sonny.
You want to know if I've had cancer. You want to know what stage of cancer I was in. You want to know if I went to either of these clinics to get cured. Well, I have not had cancer. But I'll tell you this: my uncle Fred had cancer. Anyway, the doctor thought it might be cancer. It was either that or cirrhosis of the liver.
I'll never forget my last day with uncle Fred. He was in the hospital, and I went in to tell him about where to get his cancer cured. He said he would take my advice as long as I went out and got him of fifth of Jack Daniels. I told him this: "Uncle Fred, you never bought a bottle of Jack Daniels in your life. You have spent your whole adult life drinking Kentucky Deluxe. But I promise you I'll bring you a fifth if you promise that you will go to one of the two clinics I have recommended."
"Beaney" -- he always called me Beaney -- "you have my word!"
So, I brought him his bottle of Kentucky Deluxe. He would have kept his word, too, except he died the next day. He was 38. It seems like only last month that he passed.
Come to think of it, it was last month.
You say I don't have any skin in the game. I have lots of skin in the game. I spent 15 minutes looking all this up on Google. That trumps your skin in the game every time, boy. You don't have nearly the incentive to look into these matters the way I do.
Let me tell you: there's some super-secret new experimental therapy out there that you're not going to find out about because you won't go where I recommend. Your two local oncologists don't know squat. Don't trust them. If they were any good, they would be at Johns Hopkins or one of them places that you can find on Google.
You listen to me, boy, and you'll be healthy. Just like Uncle Fred could have been if he had just listened to me sooner.
I'm an expert.
These people don't want to persuade anybody to do anything. They just want to mouth off. They have not had success in any area of life. People regard them as cranks. Nobody listens to them. But they have email. And they always seem to find me.
There are ways of persuading people, but these self-appointed experts do not have the interest in developing such skills. They just want to put people in their place.
They have written nothing. They are strangers. But they demand to be taken seriously. And if their victims regard them as amusing nuisances, they are outraged. "How dare you?" Pretty easy, actually.