To the editors:
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The question asked by the mainstream is, “Where’s the Proof.” There is a system to find this proof, and it is used every day. New diseases and conditions are described in every issue of medical journals, and old theories are routinely disposed of through the process of controlled experiment and critical analysis. The idea that Clinical ecologists are too busy curing people to build a firm theoretical basis for their contention puts them into the realm of near-quackery. Medicine is not a body of immovable dogma, but a flowing pool of new insights and connections that assemble and become part of the matrix. There is little in EI that is incompatible with modern health science. If the clinical ecologists spend some time convincing their colleagues that the disease actually exists, the rush of manpower to help solve the problem will become overwhelming.
I suspect that the element of EI theory that most distresses the mainstream is the broad effects that it allegedly creates. Nothing in medicine causes so much trouble as Candida is blamed for. The “single cause” to all mankind’s ills has been a hallmark of fringe and quack medicine, and weakens the case for EI. The relation to Schizophrenia particularly raises eyebrows. Everything seems to cause, or, alternatively, help the poor schizophrenic. A few years ago a Florida physician claimed that subjecting these patients to kidney dialysis alleviated their symptoms. He suspected that filtering out a certain chemical improved their condition. However, at the same time another doctor was dosing his patients with extra amounts of the same chemical, and reporting similar results. When both ideas were put to a controlled test, they failed. Claims such as these are subjected to the most rigid analysis, and EI will have to work hard to meet these standards.
N. Sheridan
