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Someone with even a remote familiarity with the practice of medicine would not refer to Lyme disease, one of the great imitators, as 'trivial'. The rest of your post, though forceful, similarly suffers from having no idea what you are talking about.

Regarding the length of time from the onset of low-risk chronic diseases (unpleasant though they may be), you are right that this is a problem but dead wrong about the cause. The problem is overspecialization and undercoordination. An inherent idiocy in the practitioners would be an easy problem to remedy; the truth is much more pernicious.

"Someone with even a remote familiarity with the practice of medicine would not refer to Lyme disease, one of the great imitators, as 'trivial'."

The fact that it is an imitator makes it easier to diagnose, because a competent doctor will test you for it whenever you have unexplained symptoms. While it's true that the blood tests aren't very accurate, most of the problem is that doctors just don't get people tested in the first place. And even for chronic lyme that is undetectable because it supposedly forms cysts within the cells, there is a new test up to 50x more accurate than the standard test being developed that you can have access to if you're willing to be part of the trial group.

The fact that it is an imitator makes it easier to diagnose, because a competent doctor will test you for it whenever you have unexplained symptoms.

That is a very unfair thing to say, IMO. You cannot just do unlimited blood tests for everyone who might possibly be at risk of $something. Lyme disease is notoriously hard to diagnose and also very rare. It is unfortunate that the case you referred to turned out the way it did. Our medical knowledge is far from perfect, and no doubt it was a learning experience for everyone involved. But it's going way too far to call the doctors "incompetent". If anything it is our entire medical system that remains "incompetent" and calling out individual practitioners is very unfair.

"Lyme disease is notoriously hard to diagnose and also very rare."

It's probably one of the most common, if not the most common, systemic diseases. Any time you have multiple symptoms that can't be explained, lyme is pretty much the first thing a competent doctor would test for. Sorry, but any doctor who heard the list of shooter's symtoms and doesn't instantly think lyme is incompetent. And it's really not that rare, even in absolute terms. Off the top of my head I can think of five friends who have gotten it, and those are only the ones I know of.

I can think of five friends who have gotten it, and those are only the ones I know of.

According to Wikipedia, "the ratio of Lyme disease infection is 7.9 cases for every 100,000 persons". So either you have a staggering number of friends, live in some kind of hot zone ground zero for the disease, or there's some other factor at work.

any doctor who heard the list of shooter's symtoms and doesn't instantly think lyme is incompetent

You talk like Lyme is a solved problem. I do not believe this to be the case. There is a lot of controversy over the condition and it is one of those diseases that people seize upon to explain symptoms they believe themselves to suffer, regardless of medical fact.

Have a read of this: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/17/magazine/17LYMEDISEASE.htm...

I'm sorry to hear of your health problems, but unfortunately doctors don't have tricorders yet. It's quite incorrect to suggest that people with "zero intellectual curiosity" are sought out by medical schools, in fact it's a preposterous claim.

We have made great advances in medicine in the past 100 years, but complete understanding of the human organism and its diseases still lies far in the future. Some diseases have no "tests" or definitive diagnostics; they are identified by ruling out other possible causes of the symptoms. This can take time.

"It's quite incorrect to suggest that people with "zero intellectual curiosity" are sought out by medical schools, in fact it's a preposterous claim."

Medical schools are famous for only admitting people who A) went to college B) had high GPAs C) are 'well rounded', meaning they participated in lots of school clubs or whatever. This seems like more or less a recipe for selecting candidates with low intellectual curiosity. And as for empirical evidence, I believe it's also the book How Doctors Think book that quotes the statistic that the vast majority of doctors couldn't name a single finding published in their field's leading journal within the last year.

people who did well in college and had numerous extra curricular interests and activities is a recipe for low intellectual curiosity?

> Someone really needs to make a crowdsourced website where you can post all your symptoms and test results, and then offer up a bounty to anyone who can figure out the correct diagnosis.

Just like that episode of House :) Except in the show most responses were things like "alien abduction" or "this thing my homoeopathic treatment cures". Oh yeah, and there were quite a number of these. How would you solve the swarm of crackpots problem?

Oh that's easy. Create a crowdsourced website where you can post all your diagnoses, and then offer up a bounty to anyone who can figure out the legitimate ones.