Gary:

I appreciate your thoughtful reply. In retrospect,I could have added more in my original message that helped you understand my concerns better.As luck would have it,Brian went where I was trying to go and put into words my secondary concern that some folks, especially those who are new to the site, read information here as absolute cold hard fact and hang on every word written by the members in their states of feeling scared and desperate for answers.

Many of us who have been on the board awhile have confronted the personal responsibility and accountability we feel when posting regularly for this very reason. I am equally confident that you share the quest the forum has to share state of the art information ( and you clearly are accountable) with others as evidenced by how much time you take to do so in your posts.

At times, being part of an open forum means developing trusting relationships in which members can share positive and negative feedback in the hopes of creating a good learning experience for all of us. Many readers will probably learn from the dialogue above that the next time a health care provider says they "know of the best study on oral cancer" that there
are more questions to ask about the context before assuming that study is best for all people.

I would feel badly if you stepped away from the board because you felt attacked. It has been the case before that some of us have had different perspectives on topics and have articulated those feelings here. My experience is that OCF members can "agree to disagree" when necessary while keeping the greater good of our mission in sight.

Some of the best learning I have had here has been around provocative and confusing topics such as treatment options where the opinions differ vastly (among OCF members and the medical establishment).

Part of what we do here is help members, especially the ones with less professional experience in the medical industry than you or I, to to wade through data and options and learn to develop healthy skepticism and use it as an enhancement(sounds like an oxymoron) to the trusting doctor/patient relationship when making treatment decisions.

Best,

Kim