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Who Are The Real Quack Doctors?
The UMDNJ - has anyone from overseas heard of it? I had not, not until now.
Well, what it is is the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
Yes, it is indeed supposed to be a University. I'm sure it was once a
distinguished institution but unless it corrects some of its recent
mistakes, my non-existent respect for it will decline further, as I am
sure will yours.
I am a medical graduate of Trinity College Dublin, and I am proud of
my education there as well as what the College represents historically
to medicine. TCD is the University that formed the Trinity with the
Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. These Colleges were formed to
educate rather than to turn a buck or two. The UMDNJ is also a
'trinity' of several colleges, but from what Dr Friedman's recent
testimony tells us, the recent behaviour of the UMDNJ has put its
reputation into serious question.
Dr Kenneth J .Friedman, in his testimony on November 8. 2011,
concerning the "Restoring ME/CFS Research, Education, and Patient Care
to New Jersey", has been highly revealing in the manner in which a
formerly respected place of learning and enlightenment can transform
itself into something quite distasteful, and even ugly. His warnings
are salient in today's society where even bastions of integrity are
being sold off and sold out to profit makers.
The UMDNJ has debased the concept of profession practice. We probably
would all agree that say 'a rubber duck, a yellow one maybe' has no
place in medical research. This is what the UMDNJ would have us
believe is what ME/CFS is. However, so called 'mainstream' doctors
now appear to be the real quacks after all.
ME/CFS has been emerging over the last decade or two out of the realm
of controversy and into one of pseudo-controversy. The trick in
pseudo-controversies is (a) remain ignorant of progress (b) ensure
that everyone else thinks there is nothing new.
Thus, pseudo-controversy advocated become the real quacks, whilst in
reality, ME/CFS enters mainstream. To be a strong pseudo-controversy
advocate, it is forbidden to read any information that might not
support your position, so matter how much of it there is. Reading such
information and understanding it, and worse still, believing it, is
going to ruin your reputation as a good insurance company employee,
for starters. And if you're on the UMDNJ, the situation would be even
worse for you.
They say that ME/CFS is a diagnosis of exclusion; in other words, it
belongs to some ethereal intangible never-neverland. I submit that it
would be hard, tedious and mind boggling to have to read through some
4,500 peer reviewed papers in order to objectively consider the
reality of ME/CFS, especially when you've never really paid attention
to a genuine ME/CFS patient's complaints. Doctors are at their
sharpest when they are in training for their specialist examinations.
After that, what they are inclined to read, essentially speaking, is
what interests them or peeks their curiosity. And so the decline
begins (usually).
To exclude ME/CFS from the medical school curriculum therefore, is
tantamount to a criminal act against humanity. Thousands and
thousands of people will suffer. There will be no other time in their
medical training where students might get a chance to even hear about
ME/CFS, let alone be moved towards studying it further, whilst their
minds are fresh, young and absorbent.
What of these 4,500 publications? How do they all fit together? How do
they make sense? And what about all the dead end research? (how many
rockets blew up on the launch pad before we finally put a man on the
moon?) What about specificity? How can you identify an ME/CFS
patient without some specific test? It's a process of exclusion, as
they say?
But remember, a rheumatologist's ESR is one of the most non-specific
tests there is, and yet rheumatologists, infectious disease
specialists, internists, and doctors in general use this test ALL THE
TIME. Indeed, they would be negligent not to use this test if the
context indicated it. The ESR is diagnostically non-specific, but it
almost always points to something clinically wrong with the patient.
Combine the elevated ESR with some other
symptom or finding and you are on your way to identifying the cause of
the patient's complaints. Joint pain on its own, is non specific, but
with a highly elevated ESR, it becomes something completely different.
The same non-specificity of many tests run to demonstrate something is
wrong in a patient who clinically most certainly has ME/CFS is no
different from how medicine is practiced in general, as described
above. In experienced clinician's hands, the diagnosis Is NOT one of
exclusion, as uninformed unread misguided skeptics (UUMS) would have
us believe. The concept of a Functional Somatic Disorder, in my mind,
is dead.
So, if it clinically walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then in
all probability, it is a duck (ME/CFS). The same applies to those
so-called mainstream quack doctors who would have us ban ME/CFS
research. They are UUMS's. Um!
Dr Kenneth J .Friedman is a well mannered, grounded and fair
clinician, who has a quiet and patient temperament. In my view, he is
the professional here, not the UMDNJ. Nothing personal.
Dr John L Whiting
Specialist in Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine Brisbane, Australia
Copy to
publiccomment@gov.state.nj.us
John
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