What 1989 And The Golden Girls Tell Us About Medicine Today

It’s not only bizarre on a sociological level, but from an objective public health standpoint. You’d be hard pressed to find any adult American who has not been told by his or her primary-care physician that, regardless of any fear or stigma, it is essential to be screened for sexually transmitted infections, from gonorrhea to HIV. Likewise, doctors regularly order, for example, strep tests when a patient has a sore throat, or chest X-rays when a person has cardiac-type symptoms. And yet, many physicians–following recommendations of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, which are endorsed by the CDC despite having been removed from a federal database of treatment guidelines because they have not been reviewed against current science for at least a decade–will not test patients for Lyme disease whether or not they have Lyme disease symptoms. A relative of mine who has lived with multiple sclerosis for many years, for example, has pets who have had Lyme disease and has found ticks on her body, yet despite a likely risk for having contracted Lyme, her doctor has refused on multiple occasions to order a Lyme disease test because he feels it is “wishful thinking.” Although unnecessary based on common sense, I nevertheless contacted a national multiple sclerosis foundation to ask whether having multiple sclerosis protects any individual from contracting Lyme and therefore would rule out testing for Lyme when a patient may have been exposed; no, the foundation spokesperson told me, and because “multiple sclerosis is often misdiagnosed,” “anyone who has been diagnosed with MS should certainly get a second opinion, especially from an MS specialist neurologist.” Another replied that “having multiple sclerosis does not prelude a patient from contracting Lyme disease.” And yet, the refusal to screen for infectious diseases seems to be more common than should be expected, based solely on a physician’s confidence in his or her own diagnosis.