"Youve got a little bit of a problem down below" means "a grenades gone off in here".

"You may feel a bit of gentle prodding" means "I take a size 18 glove".

"Yes of course Ive done one of these before" means "Ive seen it on ER".

"Youve got a spot on the lung" means "youre going to die".

"Itll get a little worse before it gets a little better" means "youre going to die today".

"Its probably a virus" means "go away".

"Its probably a virus but wed better examine you anyway" means "you have fabulous breasts".

"Take this drug and your risk of death will be slashed by 40pc" means "if you swallow 1,825 of these over five years and at a prescription cost of 500, your risk of death would fall by 0.9pc. The recognised side effects are muscle damage, headache, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, hairloss, anaemia, dizziness, depression, nerve damage, hepatitis, jaundice, pancreatitis and hypersensitivity syndrome".

Doctors are human, so we make mistakes, act in our own best interests and give biased advice. One way to inoculate yourself against this is to seek out and understand the scientific evidence behind what we say, rather than taking it at face value. Senseaboutscience.org is a good place to start.

Five doctors often give five different opinions. Are four of them lying or just ill-informed? Remember also that disguising the truth is a two way street. Patients lie to doctors as much as we lie to you.

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Why your doctor doesn't always tell you the truth