Having Lyme means losing your innocence, utterly, in science. It's true. I am remembering the night I explained evidence-based medicine to a friend whose daughter had Lyme. I explained that in Lyme evidence-based medicine was a ``tool'' for persuasion in a polemic argument. He was stunned. His daughter had Lyme. He believed in science. He had trouble, real trouble, getting his daughter diagnosed and treated. He knew the problems of Lyme from the inside out. But it hadn't occurred to him that science wasn't ``pure'' science. That researchers followed their bias, their pet theories, their commercial interests in designing and interpreting studies. It was an interesting moment with this sharp and concerned father while he tried to understand the depth of the problem in Lyme. It was a moment when innocence is utterly lost for the first time to those who know how the system of science ``ought'' to work.
He was captured in the first blush that the problem was simply one of communication. That if we explained clearly and simply the science in the peer-reviewed literature, well, that that should trump any other concerns. And certainly that those who placed patient interest above other concerns would stop, pause and reassess. That is what men (and women) of science do, right? Well, that is what altruistic science aspires to.
Posted by David Miller (Member # 21583) on :
Do you mean to say, maybe, that "medicine is not science" I'd certainly agree with that.
And I agree that scientists all have biases too, being human, but at least in science there's a self-correcting factor missing in most other parts of life. (proof through repeatable experiments, hypothesis testing, etc)
Still I'd say on scientists behalf that the practice of medicine for lyme is well behind the science of lyme, and that politics and greed are the primary reasons this is so.
My $.02
Posted by coltman (Member # 21272) on :
I never lost faith in scientific method. But after reading dozens of papers directly contradicting IDSA guidelines I completely lost any faith in "evidence based medicine". Its not science ,it bureaucracy which sole purpose is keeping the status quo at any cost. The system is made to benefit AMA and pharma. No one else.