To the editors:
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
I thought that Bob McClory’s article on Candida-associated illness [“The Yeast of Our Problems,” January 22] was interesting and well-written, but quite slanted, and I would like to offer a dissenting view. It seemed to me that Mr. McClory was wholeheartedly endorsing the validity of the concepts underlying the so-called Yeast Connection, with barely a reluctant nod to the great majority of physicians and scientists who take a very dim view of these unproven theories. The portrayal of a grand conspiracy involving greedy and unethical pharmaceutical companies, agribusiness and physicians in a cover-up to foster and then deny the existence of this alleged epidemic was particularly annoying and totally unsupported by facts.
Many of these patients are extremely resistant to the suggestion that their symptoms have a psychological basis and cling ferociously to any oddball theory emanating from the pages of the National Enquirer which may ascribe their illness to an organic process. There are striking similarities between the “Yeast Connection” and another trendy nondisease, chronic Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) infection. Both “diseases” are so vague, nonspecific and utterly nondiagnosable by conventional medical tests that virtually anyone with any symptom can justly lay claim to a bad case of yeast connected illness, environmental illness, CEBV, or any combination of these afflictions.
