Source: New York Times
Date: January 17, 2008
Author: Benjamin Natelson
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/opinion/l17disease.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Ref: See,
http://listserv.nodak.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0801B&L=co-cure&P=R2888&
Letters: Fibromyalgia: The Pain Is Very Real
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To the Editor:
Your article suggesting that fibromyalgia isn;t a disease translates a
significant health problem into a polemic. The problem derives from medical materialism. By this I mean that doctors tell patients that nothing's wrong, if no abnormality can be found.
With this stance, patients fall between the cracks of classic medicine left
on their own or to the burgeoning alternative medicine industry.
When I took the Hippocratic oath, I didn't pledge to care for only patients
with stroke or cancer but instead to do whatever possible to reduce suffering
and improve health. Your article will make doctors, relatives and friends of
millions with fibromyalgia conclude that their symptoms are just a 'physical
response to stress, depression, and economic and social anxiety.'
This is an opinion ignoring published medical literature showing brain abnormalities in fibromyalgia and drugs that clearly improve patient health.
What's needed is less talk and more federally financed, peer-reviewed research.
Benjamin H. Natelson
Newark, Jan. 15, 2008
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(c) 2008 New York Times
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