Ouch! This does point out--and very well with good detail--what my anecdotal experiences have been in the last 15 years...too many doctors are not given the kind of training and focus they once did (prior to the 1970's for instance)on the patient as a whole person...so many specialists I have seen only look at one small part of the whole. Well written article.

A well researched article written with great detail. It speaks to my experience with the medical profession--if one is going to be sick, make sure the illness is a common one listed in all the medical literature. For if one's illness is rare, chances of recovery are considerably diminished. In my youth I had a doctor who, each time he saw a patient, carefully looked them over--their eyes, fingernails, skin, ears, etc., noticing signs the body gives. He believed that the practice of medicine was not a science, but an art.

Excellent review (as is usual for this pub) on how medicine is really an inexact science (to quote Aristotle) and how important this is to remember in our age of exagerated scientistic exactitude.

Fiirst, in the interest of full disclosure, I am a board certified family physician and president of the Cleveland Academy of Family Physicians. I found this article to be engrossing and informative, but feel that it would have been more powerful if it had included the pressure to "satisfy the customer" and the inappropriate pressures caused by direct-to-consumer advertising, which leads too many people to enter doctors' offices demanding specific medications for a disease they often don't have. The negative effects of having the pharmaceutical industry pay for much of the research done on new drugs, thus controlling the reporting (and failure to report!) the results of the research, in addition to their dominance in the area ... More »

Interesting and definitely mirrors my own experiences with doctors. I miss GPs :D