It astonishes me that people would be prepared to acquiesce to authority when a doctor tells them to ingest these drugs that they really know very little about, but draw the line at accepting the advice about taking the whole course of drugs.
Gone are the days where a doctor should be taken at his judgment 100% as if medicine is a black box enigma. The average HNer would be wise to google about their conditions and drugs they consume. A doctor can only remember so much - they are primarily valuable for their experience in hueristic diagnosis -- not for knowing everything medical and everything pharmacutical. It is wise to relinquish some responsibility to a professional but not all.
Most of medicine aside from surgical methods can be understood by a mildly intelligent person who cares enough, because of wikipedia and google, everything except actual experience is very accessible.
I dont see how your astonishment is anything other than misinformed hyperbole.
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Antibiot...
For the most part, of course. Cultural evolution does occur, however it's unpredictable and not something that can be easily forced.