How to Choose a Reputable Health Web site

We were going to advise you which health Web sites were the best to use if you had a question. The fact is, for cancer alone, there are over 14.2 million sites on the Worldwide Web and it would be a daunting task for us to look at each. So what we have decided to do is come up with a set of guidelines for you to use when searching for a site.

There's plenty of good medical information on the Web. Although the best known and most credible sites usually show up first in search engines, a few links down the page may be sites with medical misinformation.

Please be careful and make sure to:
Click on the About Us icon to get an idea of who is actually sponsoring the site.
Look for sites with a dot-gov, dot-edu or a dot-net address; they are government, non profit and university sites and usually free of commercial sponsorship.

Source: Wall St. Journal

Ask yourself:
Is this site sponsored by a company?
Are they trying to sell me something?
Are there any conflicts of interest?
Is the information written by an author qualified to write on the subject?
Is the information current, factual and referenced?

Warning:
If you're not feeling well, you can end up even sicker. Don't self-diagnose yourself after getting information on the Web. There is a difference between having well-developed knowledge about a medical issue and just having loads of information, especially if much of that information may be wrong.

Source--Time magazine, Paging Dr. Gupta, November, 2004