You name it - herbal tea, curcumin, ginseng - and he wants to sell it to you. But if physicians don't consider his target diseases real things, insurance won't cover it. That's bad for business. So this paper is welcome news for them.
Ignoring the capitalism of it all, is it really "gaslighting", a popular cliché meant to emotionally infer that doctors are telling patients they're lying, or simply not letting patients diagnose themselves?
Sorry doctors, you can't just be good at medicine, you have to be able to navigate the emotional landmines of someone who saw "House" on TV and is convinced they have lupus.
Fibromyalgia is a blanket term so broad it could mean anything. It is certainly odd to have a condition overwhelmingly reported by middle class white women that no test can validate be called Gaslighting if a physician chooses not to just give up and agree they have it. Chronic lyme disease does not exist. "Multiple chemical sensitivity", as with the Gluten Sensitivity fad a decade ago, sounds like the kind of thing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. would've invented to get out of paying alimony. It screams progressive person who yearns to have medical legitimacy for their chemophobia.
This all happens if a doctor tells you that they can't find any evidence you're allergic to the food coloring in Blue Bell ice cream?
Regardless of the lack of evidence those exist at all, because the plural of anecdote is not data and some people reporting those seem like they could be claiming they were abducted by aliens next month, proponents are using the new meta-analysis to claim patients are being shamed by doctors and perhaps will even become suicidal if a doctor simply says, 'I can't find anything wrong with you.'
Those physicians are just not qualified, critics charge, but the ones who agree with us are.
That's not how science works. Because it is a meta-analysis it is only EXPLORATORY. The meta analysis is by a PhD in communication and one in psychology, but it is unclear they understand how doing clean scholarship really works. They added nearly 25% of the papers into the meta-analysis manually. It reads like if I did an unweighted random effects meta-analysis of astrologers and then concluded that if an astrology believer goes to a doctor and wants to know if their chakra is out of balance, they will be suicidal if a physician says their chakra is not real.
But then claims therapy will help.
It's bizarre. It's like telling people in violent relationships how to better cope with being assaulted. And if you are a family member, agree with anything anyone believes they have or else it's your fault. Even worse if you are a doctor.
Nonetheless, Dr. Teitelbaum uses the odd paper as vindication for his beliefs The Establishment Is Wrong, writing in a statement, “Instead of simply admitting ‘I don’t know,’ and referring them to an appropriate specialist in the know, they treat patients with contempt and condescension, which makes them feel bad about themselves and doubt their legitimate experiences of illness and pain.”
"A specialist in the know" means specialist who Is Ready To Believe You. Like him. This is a problem brought about by DSM 5 making virtually everything some sort of psychological condition. If 85% of people can suddenly be labeled with a malady the remaining 15% are an oppressed minority demanding equitable treatment.
If only insurance companies would get on board with every non-specific symptom being a declared disease, suicides might plummet. He goes even farther and declares Women Are Impacted Most. “The math suggests that at least 25 million American women are the recipients of unacceptable physician abuse.”
Yet nearly half of physicians are women, and female patients overwhelmingly have female doctors, so are women gaslighting themselves as physicians and then gaslighting female patients?
If reading Science 2.0 can get covered by health insurance, I suppose I will do the research to find out.
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