For Justin, An Opinion Post

id·i·o·path·ic: adj. Of, relating to, or designating a disease having no known cause.

I think that the term "idiopathic" should be something of an embarassment to the medical community. Of course, it's only reasonable to acknowledge that not everything can be known. There is research yet to be done, and there are some things we just don't know yet. My particular beef with the term idiopathic, though, is that it seems like it's trying to hide its own meaning. It sounds like a word that a knowledgeable person would know, yet it actually works to cover up a lack of knowledge. I assume that a doctor doesn't want to say, "um, yeah, we don't know why you're having migraines," so he says, "you're having idiopathic headaches" - as though that were a satisfactory diagnosis.

I have a similar problem with the notion of an exclusionary diagnosis. I'll put a finer point on that and talk about SIDS. First of all, it's the syndrome that dare not speak its name for any parent of infants, so I hardly dare type it, but I think about it all the time, so I may as well mention it here. We don't know what causes it. The name, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, itself should be an embarassment - our diagnosis: your infant has suddenly died. And we don't know why, we just know what didn't cause it.

I accept that modern medicine has its limits, but let's call a spade a spade.

-Angie