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> and I see requests for testing for all sorts of bizarre things

It would be interesting: Can you list a bunch?

Micronutrients, even in hair. Trace metals, especially after chelation therapy, when the results are definitely misleading. Labs that associate Candida with everything. "Stealth" virus testing. Quack Lyme disease serology labs that always give positive results. Anti-malignin antibodies. Multi variate index assays predicting irritable bowel disease. IgG food allergies. Outrageously large (>50-100 component) IgE allergy tests.

A bit of a wild guess, but many of those look like self-diagnosing or "fringe" from folks dealing with autoimmunity issues. Is that right?

Comes from all walks, but some from those folks. Mostly folks with real problems, like those in these threads, but who have unwittingly entered into a predatory industry that relies on providing overly specific data to people with nonspecific problems.

I'm sorry to hear that it extends to many fields.

> but who have unwittingly entered into a predatory industry

How exactly is it predatory? Rheumatology, which rarely engages in "cures" and whose "treatments" are often an exchange of one set of problems for another (if at all), and yet never fails to collect on its patients, might well fall under that umbrella.

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