Some doctors pooh-pooh diseases that are proven to have a pathogenic cause telling them that the pain they're experiencing is just a figment of their imagination

By Patricia Nell Warren | July 03, 2011:

This isn't the first time that the medical establishment has pooh-poohed a growing cohort of patients, telling them that the pain and agony they're experiencing is just a figment of their imagination.

Witness the stand-offish posture that the CDC and most doctors still maintain towards chronic fatigue syndrome. For decades now, because of the deep depression that often impacts people with CFS, some authorities view CFS as a mental illness. Today the CDC still classifies CFS as a "disorder," not an infectious disease, saying, "The cause or causes of CFS remain unknown." As recently as 1993, a Lancet article characterized CFS as a psychiatric condition. Yet some observers still have the opinion that CFS will be found to have a viral cause - possibly a retrovirus.

Some doctors even pooh-pooh diseases that are proven to have a pathogenic cause, like Lyme disease - whose cause (insect bites that transmit infection by a nasty bacteria) has been scientifically proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yet amazingly enough, there are still doctors around the United States who won't treat Lyme disease as such because they insist that the depression that often accompanies Lyme makes it a "mental illness." Read more>>