western medicine practises, ironically, suffers from chronic shortsightedness…

it was this paragraph from your initial mail that caused me to think you were
expecting a cure.

<dave>

If they aren’t going to change how they deal with disease then
they
should at least be up front and honest with us. The first things out
of their mouths should be, "Look, the best I can do is offer you
temporary relief of some of your symptoms. I have no idea what
causes these skin problems and I certainly cannot offer you any kind

of cure. The treatments I prescribe lose effectiveness over time and
do have side effects, especially if used over a long period of time.
We don’t know what the long term side effects are for the newer
treatments."

</dave>

sorry for the misunderstanding.

however i do go back to my point in that its our responsibility to find what
works for us best anyway (with some help from a derm). i’ve just taken two days
off any sort of treatment and my face is much less red than its been for ages!!
go figure! :O) i don’t get it yet…

The main controversy of Amevive is whether or not it has undesirable side
effects on other T-cell functions–so far, it seems like the side effects
are minimal but then again you can never trust a drug company when they talk
about side effects

IMHO, I think this product will be the closest thing to a cure we can hope
for in the foreseeable future–best thing about this drug also is that it is
an injection and not a topical so we won’t have to worry about increased
local sensitivity/irritation/etc etc.

This product should be receiving final FDA approval any day now and should

be covered by most health plans (like Enbrel is). Now I just need to
convince my derm that my mild psoriasis on my knees and elbows is enough for
him to give me the RX as I am sure derms won’t be prescribing this for seb
derm. To that end, I have purposefully NOT been treating my psoriasis and
it has gotten slightly worse over the past few months.

My plan the day I go to see him about Amevive is to scrath the hell out of
it so that is bleeding and very inflamed and just tell "Nothing is working,
please give me Amevive to end this madness"–

RJ

tony the baloney the one and only

The point I was trying to make is that in my opinion most
dermatologists are not up front about the long term prognosis that
their treatments offer people with skin diseases. They certainly
don’t tell their patients that they only treat the symptoms and
they
don’t focus on what causes the disease. And most of them are not
interested in what causes the disease. They show virtually no
interest in exploring the relationship that your diet, stress, the

environment or other factors may have in causing your disease. The
next time you talk with your dermatologist try getting past talking
about treating symptoms and see where the conversation goes. It will
go nowhere.

You’ll never hear a dermatologist say, "I only treat the
symptoms of
your disease, not the cause, so unless your body heals itself nothing
I prescribe for you will offer you a long term resolution of your
skin problem." But that’s exactly the way it is. This is
the way
dermatology was fifty years ago, and I bet you money it will be the
way dermatology will be in the year 2053. The chemical goop and the
pills they prescribe only treat symptoms (and often with some nasty
side effects for some people.) As long as this is the case these
skin conditions will always be with us.

And why is all the research money going in to developing drugs that
treat symptoms instead of getting to the bottom of what causes these
diseases? I think the drug companies and dermatologists have found
an economic model they are comfortable with. They know that treating
symptoms offers both short term and long term profits. My guess is
that they don’t feel that anything else offers anything better
than
what they have now. Where would the drug companies and
dermatologists be if we found that many of these skin diseases could
be resolved with changes to the patient’s environment and/or diet?

In my opinion this entire situation is absurd. Patients should
demand better.

Dave

also the issues you raise with regard to dermatologists ‘focusing on new drugs’.
this is probably the best use of their time to be fair, or at least its the best
use of time from their perspective. they are western doctors and i’m, afraid
the issues you raise with regard to their focus is also a general problem with
western medical philosophy. the shift to a holistic approach is starting,
slowly admittedly, but it is starting. once that is true then the referrals you
mention will become commonplace (i for one can’t wait for this).

sorry to seem down on what you say, by and large i do agree with you, but there

are things that ultimately we ourselves are responsible for and in all honesty
we ourselves are our best hopes for finding what truly works for us in a control
and manage sense. every face a dermatologist (scuse the pun) is faced with is
completely individual and has an entire drug response topology all of its
own…its a hard job, from what i can tell. i’m still trying this and that
cream after nearly 9 months of experimentation, what can a derm really achieve
in 1 half hour consultation?

peace and regards,

jammer
www.jammer.biz