Back in 2022, we ran an episode about a woman named Elaine, who was diagnosed with an early stage of cancer, which was treatable with surgery.

But Elaine was pretty skeptical of mainstream medicine and decided she wasn't comfortable with the idea of surgery.

So she did her own research and learned about alternative options, experimental stuff,

herbal remedies, even scorpion venom.

But those things did not stop the progression of Elaine's cancer, and she died.

Skepticism about mainstream medicine has guided people's individual health decision-making for a long time, people whose politics are on the right and the left.

But in the U.S., this kind of mistrust is increasingly guiding public policy for all of us.

At the federal level, Robert Kennedy Jr., who's been critical of the medical establishment for years, is now the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

And it's happening at the state level, too.

Utah just voted to remove fluoride from their water supply because so many people were worried that it might not be safe, despite scientific consensus that it is safe and helps

prevent tooth decay in kids and adults. Public health is about how each of our health decisions

scale up, and there's a tension between individual freedom and the consequences for all of us,

like with vaccine hesitancy, for example.

This episode is about how a decision to forego medical advice affects others on a more intimate scale.

Elaine was the mother of the writer Archie Matlow.

That's who I interviewed for this episode.

Archie wrote a wonderfully honest, painful, and somehow

really funny book about Elaine called Dead Mom Walking, a memoir of miracle cures and other disasters.

When the book was published, Archie used the name Rachel Matlow. They now prefer Archie,

so we've updated that in the tracking for this episode. Archie used the name Rachel Matlow. They now prefer Archie, so we've updated that in the tracking for this episode.

Archie has also written about their gender identity evolution, including a couple of years ago about transitioning while your father has dementia.

The headline of that piece, Why My Father Called Me Son, Daughter, he, she, and it. There's a link to

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