What’s Making Us Sick Is an Epidemic of Diagnoses

NY Times ^ | January 2, 2007 | H. GILBERT WELCH, LISA SCHWARTZ and STEVEN WOLOSHIN

[Sherman Logan]

Hey!

I can tell you that psoriasis is indeed unpleasant, although not perhaps heartbreaking.

[EQAndyBuzz]

"MITRAL VALVE PROLAPSE (don't have it).....and IBS (don't have it)."

I was just diagnosed with Mitral Valve Prolapse. I had to take a sonogram. It is now four weeks since I took it and no results. When I ask my doctor about it, he says if it was serious I would already have been contacted.

So I was diagnosed with something by a new doctor that my old doctors haven't noticed in 45 years and I am told not to worry.

As for IBS, If it is what I think it is, I think I got a case of it on election night.

[tiki]

That's pretty much my belief.

[GoldCountryRedneck]

Agreed. On his 100th birthday, my great-grandfather, when asked about his secret-to-old-age replied without batting an eye, "Stay away from them doctors."

He died at 103 in the hospital having broken his hip. Caught pnuemonia while in the ward...

[Mrs. Darla Ruth Schwerin]

I don't remember. Mostly thought it was good sarcasm...

[AmericaUnited]

Read the book "Confessions of a Medical Heretic"!!!

[AmericaUnited]

The average person walking into a doctor's office and getting a full checkup, is the same insanity as taking an old car into a hungry mechanics's garage and asking him to check it over and do whatever he thinks the car needs.

[Trillian]

Ping

[MadIvan]

One of the things I find striking about American television is the sheer number of ads for prescription drugs. Usually it's some drug for some minor disorder and there follows a long list of side-effects, such as nausea, vomiting, and suddenly dropping dead. I get suspicious when there is a preference to cater to every minor twinge.

Regards, Ivan

[najida]

I don't clean house so I have to have a mammogram every year.

[neverdem]

I get suspicious when there is a preference to cater to every minor twinge.

How else is Big Pharma going to make a profit and pay for new research too? /s

[catroina54]

I was thinking the exact same thing many years ago when the first one went off to school and i saw how the "modern" classroom was arranged. Having the desks facing each other in groups instead of aisles and the area rugs and toys ,activity centers etc. annoyed me as how can a small kid pay attention and work with all these distractions.
ADD was the disease of the month back then.
This style of classroom was also in their parochial schools and the same type of teaching too.

[maryz]

Excellent article. Thanks for posting!

[3catsanadog]

For a good read, go to www.allnurses.com, find the forum and look for a thread called "what was the most ridiculous thing a patient came to the ER for".

It's 80 some pages long - you will not believe that this happens.

[Xenalyte]

Everyday experiences like . . . twitchy legs . . . now become . . . restless leg syndrome

Bullshit. A huge steaming pile, to be exact.

Restless leg syndrome is real, and I am here to tell everyone it sucks so bad, I don't even have enemies bad enough to wish it on.

[maryz]

For a while some of the ads on TV didn't even say what the medicine was for.

IIRC, at the time, the law/regulation required that they not say what it was for. (Dont't ask me!)_

[gcruse]

The left medicalizes all our pains while the right criminalizes all our pleasures. Greta Garbo had it right. She just wanted to be left alone.

[maryz]

When doctors went on strike in Australia (socialized medicine), the death rate went DOWN.

Back in the late 70s or early 80s, doctors went on strike in California, Israel and one other place I forget (not related!). In each case, the death rate went down.

[maryz]

You sound familiar. Did you use to play a doctor on I Love Lucy? ;-)

[maryz]

I can tell you that psoriasis is indeed unpleasant, although not perhaps heartbreaking.

I don't know how old you are, but as late as the late 50s, early 60s, there were little ads in the back of magazines that offered relief from "the heartbreak of psoriasis." Honest!