What is odd, perhaps, is how the primacy of patient autonomy and informed consent over efficacy, which is what we’re talking about here, was presumed but not actively discussed within the medical profession. Although the authoritative and paternalistic reassurance of the Victorian doctor who “blinds with science” is a thing of the past in medicine, the success of the alternative therapy movement—practitioners mislead, mystify, and blind their patients with sciencey-sounding “authoritative” explanations, like the most patronizing Victorian doctor imaginable—suggests that there may still be a
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