I had something I had written up but it got lost...poof
The main conjecture this whole argument is that Hall sets herself as the guardian along with a psych friend (which she met at a skeptic’s conference) as gatekeepers to bad medicine. Ignore them; they are nothing! They set themselves up as the 'gods' over the affairs of the medical profession acting as the sole judge and jury over the determinates of bad science. They author a two-bit hack job on a prestigious doctor who worked alongside Dr. Montoya at Stanford University with ME/CFS patients in a clinical trial center. We have U.S. government watchdogs. There are laws and procedures in place to protect the patient as well as the doctor. They certainly aren't the self-appointed watch dog regardless of what their delusional aspiration may be...(especially with a website rank of 72000)... I would be curious who they are funded by...perhaps pharmaceutical or disability insurance companies...hmmm.
It is certain a two-bit hatchet job by Hall -- who I do not believe has any journalistic/investigative or research/educational background -- must be aspiring for a position as the health editor of the Washington Post. It is quite certain that Hall is clueless about this illness from the article and by her comments. Otherwise, she would have researched the 8000+ research articles on ME/CFS and at least known about the CCC and ICCC case definitions that clinicians use to diagnose and differentiate one patients groups from another which Hall is very oblivious to. Her condescending attitude toward ‘the malingers’ not knowing the background of some of these patients, says it all. In a majority of these cases, you have renowned doctors, academian professors, clinical psychologists, nurses, teachers, world renown Olympians, athletic champions and competitors, police, lawyers, airline pilots, scientific researchers stricken down with this illness after a post viral infection, Hall & her colleagues are clueless as to the seriousness of this illness and as well as to the scope of this disease within the general population. The cost to taxpayers of this illness is a staggering $29 billion. $7 million in funding is just to keep the lights on in the research departments while in comparison Aids Research receives $1Billion dollars for a smaller population.
Kogelnik did absolutely nothing wrong. I know him. He is methodical and conducts a thorough medical work up on each patient before dispensing any type of medication. Patients have to fall within the CCC/ICCC definition and lab work and prior medical history is thorughly investigated. He is allowed to use off label drugs with informed consent under FDA guidelines. There is nothing illegal about it. Just as it is NOT illegal to offer Neurontin off label to ME/CFS patients. Doctors do it all the time. They use Rituxan for RA patients. They have been using it for a long time, it is a fairly safe drug. Dr. Hall, why don't you peddle your somatization theories somewhere else. Perhaps, undo the damage from the DSM Manual II stating that Homosexuality is an aberrant behavior and a serious mental disorder. What happened there! Did they become cured all of a sudden? How many diseases were mislabeled by the psych community still operating in the ‘dark ages’ and how many more do we have to contend with. We have newer scientific technologies that will bring real science to the field of medicine. Dr. Hall, focus instead on the real wackos in the field of medicine. The psych community with outdated psychobabble therapeutic models from Gestalt, Jungian, Rogerian, EFT, ESP, NLP, EMRD, Pass Life Regression, CBT, PACE, etc. and let us not forget frontal lobotomies and electric shock therapy! That is where you will find the real wacko practitioners selling Woo, Woo!
Eco
I will edit this later as I lost a large portion of what I wanted to say.