Trust your GP and beware of internet diagnosis

How ironic that when you have a front page article about the dangers of ‘cyberchondria’, you also have on your inside pages a separate item informing readers about a website relating to symptoms, etc, for irritable bowel syndrome (IBS ).

First, what surprises me is how long it has taken the medical profession to formally recognise cyberchondria as a condition, given that somebody as non-medical as myself has long been aware of at least the possibility of its existence.

Second, there is no mention in your article of the very important point, namely that, regardless of how brilliantly an article ( whether or not it is on the internet ) explains a medical condition,its symptoms, etc, what it cannot do is tell whether the condition actually applies to anyone who happens to be reading.