[onion2k]

This guy spent 11 years becoming an expert. He talked to experts. He learned from and worked with experts. All those doctors and professors in the article who helped him are experts. He found his answer in a medical textbook.

If your take is "experts are rubbish" then you have fundamentally missed the point.

[tomhoward]

Let's try not to be too black/white about this.

Different types of expertise are valid and important, and different people have different motivations for what they do and how they do it.

The key point of this article is that someone who started out as a non-expert, was motivated by his own need to overcome an illness that established experts couldn't diagnose or treat, because they didn't share his predicament.

Let's just try to appreciate that for what it is.

[tcbawo]

They way I interpreted his take was that experts can be stubborn and risk-adverse. After all, the downside risk for reputation probably outweighs the upside for a risky and unique surgery.

[mc32]

While true, many were extremely skeptical and many didn’t want to be associated with him so he had to seek out people who were willing to risk their professional reputation to help him.