Progress has been hampered both by the variability and generally poor predictability of patient outcomes and by the insistence by mainstream medicine for a credible scientific mechanism that can explain the reported recoveries. Anecdotal data describe recovery of some individuals with many of the above mentioned illnesses following CAM based therapies. Impaired neuropsychiatric functioning in adults is also becoming widespread with varying diagnostic labeling such as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), so called chronic Lyme disease, depression, addiction and anti-social behaviors.Р”Р„lthough largely outlawed by the Flexner Report and continually discredited by the Government health agencies in support of the pharmaceutical industry, there is a resurgence of interest in complementary alternative medicine (CAM).

A prime example is autism 4 along with a broad spectrum of less severe childhood learning and behavioral disorders. More troubling, the prevalence of several chronic illnesses is increasing. The essential failure of the pharmaceutical approach to medicine is seen in the continuing high incidence of many chronic illnesses, 3 in spite of the enormous costs of mainstream medicine. For these reasons, adverse effects of pharmaceuticals are to be anticipated and weighed against whatever clinical benefits are forthcoming. Even if the drugs were to be highly selective in their action, they will likely affect the functioning of the same pathway operating in normal cells. Furthermore, with few exceptions the drugs are not pathway specific. The anticipated goal that the drug will act selectively on the intended pathway or that the identified target is indeed crucially important in disease causation are not always met.

2 Pharmaceuticals are continually being developed to address each of the provisionally identified metabolic imbalances. This understanding has fostered enormous growth of laboratory based diagnostic endeavors, which are now approaching the extreme of personalized medicine in which every gene in a patient can be sequenced and every biochemical pathway scrutinized. Since the Flexner Report of 1910, 1 American medicine has been predicated on the premise that all chronic illnesses result from specific cellular biochemical aberrations, potentially treatable using pharmaceuticals.

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