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Comment by brianstorms

Skepticism is required for your comment. There are scammers, sure. There are also incompetent (or just lazy or ignorant) doctors. Bad diagnoses are made. Things happen.

But the fact remains that the disease, a very complicated disease with no direct simple cause and no direct simple cure (let alone treatment), exists. A large part of the problem is there is little money in it, from the medical industry's perspective. Not a large enough "market" of sufferers. Not a large enough business opportunity for the pharmaceutical industry. Not a large blip on the radar of the health insurance industry who don't give a damn. Not a large enough concern for the NIH and other government agencies. And so the money doesn't flow. And that means a lot of research doesn't get done. And CFS/ME stays on the "fringe", and a lot of mainstream doctors in Kaiser and other big systems don't know how to or don't want to deal with CFS/ME, because it doesn't show up on their checklists, it's too nuanced for them to bother with, and the patients are sent "out of network" (read: they're on their own).

And so it goes.

Finally, I would beg to differ regarding no viral or bacteriological signatures for CFS/ME. More than a decade and a half of direct experience with a loved one with CFS/ME suggests that there is, based on evidence shown of viral markers revealed in exotic, hard-to-get blood tests (read; insanely expensive, not-covered-by-insurance) that most labs won't even do.

parent brianstorms 11 years ago

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