So you used the sort of 'evidence' that is used to claim that homeopathy is effective, mediums can communicate with the dead, and magical demons interfere with human affairs. I apologise for not making that clear.
Talk abut putting words in someone's mouth!
Evidence based medicine excludes the importance of clinical expertise and anecdotal evidence. There are lots of people who think that is a BIG mistake, including me.
You're right; I don't believe that is a wise strategy and moves medicine forward the way you say it does.
The last 30 years since it came into "favor" in some circles proves that point as well. Scientific studies are typically considered more flawed and biased in that time period, rather than less overall.
And actually, I don't care if someone uses any of the methods you mention. Because they will cause no harm (except to pocketbook and that is an individual choice).
There are infinite examples of things we don't fully understand in this world. Just because we don't understand how something works, doesn't mean it doesn't (even if it doesn't work all the time).
Sometimes, there are multifactorial factors and something works just because we get a little lucky.
And in the suffering this illness causes, I can live with that, along with my *full* definition of evidence, provided the risk of harm is low.
Whereas the strategy you espouse, has great potential to cause harm by missed diagnoses and ineffective treatment and denial of care by insurance companies who decline to pay for any treatments they consider "experimental" even if *some* amount of benefit has been shown, or there is political controversy.
I actually have a list of about 20 more studies that I could post to debate. But I don't want to anymore. I think I've been perfectly clear about the pros and cons of Lyme testing and the controversy over treatment, both medical and political.
The literature is clear in only one way. Lyme is complicated. Just like ME/CFS. We can debate the studies ad nauseum as we have done.
Or we can stop and say we have a fundamental difference in opinion and each believe the other to be giving terrible advice.
But that only works if you *stop* defaming certified doctors and labs, posting studies that don't say exactly what you say they do, referring to tests I've never advocated for, and making personal attacks on my individual choices to use those doctors and labs to treat my illness by calling my doctors "quacks" using "dodgy" labs to practice medicine.
Or we can even start a new thread to discuss the limitations of "evidence based medicine" and how insurance companies use demonstrably flawed studies to decide what treatments they will fund and how people suffer based on that approach.
It's up to you.
But I have only one word left for this thread...FUTILITY.
Stephen Falken: Now, children, come on over here. I'm going to tell you a bedtime story. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.
Once upon a time, there lived a magnificent race of animals that dominated the world through age after age. They ran, they swam, and they fought and they flew, until suddenly, quite recently, they disappeared.
Nature just gave up and started again. We weren't even apes then. We were just these smart little rodents hiding in the rocks. And when we go, nature will start again. With the bees, probably.
Nature knows when to give up, David.
David: I'm not giving up. If Joshua tricks them into launching an attack, it'll be your fault.
Stephen Falken:
My fault? The whole point was to practice nuclear war without destroying ourselves; to get the computer to learn from mistakes we could not afford to make. Except, that I never could get Joshua to learn the most important lesson.
David: What's that?
Stephen Falken: Futility. That there's a time when you should just give up.
Jennifer: What kind of a lesson is that?
Stephen Falken: Did you ever play
tic-tac-toe?
Jennifer: Yeah, of course.
Stephen Falken: But you don't anymore.
Jennifer: No.
Stephen Falken: Why?
Jennifer: Because it's a boring game. It's always a tie.
Stephen Falken: Exactly. There's no way to win. The game itself is pointless!
War Games, 1983