Scientists Edge Closer To Lab Test For Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
<i>&quot;Do you know what they call &#x27;alternative medicine&#x27; that&#x27;s been proved to work?
Medicine.&quot;</i> - Tim Minchin, <i>Storm</i>, 2008.<p>Should you trust an authority?  That is always a personal decision.  I try not to, but I will listen to someone with credentials and give weight to their knowledge and experience.  Online randoms describing an &quot;alternative&quot; are not challenging authority or bypassing it: no matter how they try to frame it, they are trying on the mantle of authority itself, but with no foundation.<p>Your assertion that &quot;policy makers&quot; are systematically withholding &quot;solid information about your body&quot; is paranoid nonsense.<p>If you want to go study the systems of your body, all the world&#x27;s medical information is publicly available.  There&#x27;s a reason a medical degree takes seven years or more, however: the body of knowledge is vast and interconnected.  It&#x27;s not withheld, it&#x27;s just a much greater challenge than many of us are willing to undertake.<p>Online forums may be a source of good advice and anecdotal suggestions, but they also give false hope to the desperate, and thereby open the window to perpetuating snake oil and quackery and delusional magical thinking.  At their worst, this amounts to conducting uncontrolled medical experiments on other human beings who are only willing because they are desperate - and that&#x27;s close to evil in my book.