
One of the responsibilities of a licensed physician is to read the medical 
literature to keep up with changes in medical practice.  All the clamor 
over laetril resulted in the NCI spending quite a bit of money on clinical 
trials which proved(to me anyway) that laetril was ineffective against 
cancer.  A physician who continued to use it, when better, more effective, 
treatments are available, may deserve to be called a quack.  Anti-fungals 
are in a different class.  The big question seems to be is it reasonable to 
use them in patients with GI distress or sinus problems that *could* be due 
to candida blooms following the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics?  Gorden 
Rubenfeld, through e-mail, has assured me that most physicians recognize 
the chance of candida blooms occuring after broad-spectrum antibiotic use 
and they therefore reinnoculate their patients with *good* bacteria to 
restore competetion for candida in the body.  I do not believe that this is 
yet a standard part of medical practice.  He deals with critical care 
patients where fungal infection(systemic) is a real problem and just 
because he tries to keep *good* bacteria in his patients does not mean that 
all physicians do this.  I think that aspergillis is more likely to be 
found in the sinus mucus membranes than is candida.  Women have been known 
for a very long time to suffer from candida blooms in the vagina and a 
women is lucky to find a physician who is willing to treat the cause and 
not give give her advise to use the OTC anti-fungal creams.  Since candida 
colonizes primarily in the ano-rectal area, GI symptoms should be more common 
than vaginal problems after broad-spectrum antibiotic use.

The problem we have here David is proof that GI discomfort can be caused by 
a candida bloom.  The arguement is that without proof, no action is 
warrented.

Medicine has not, and probalby never will be, practiced this way.  There 
has always been the use of conventional wisdom.  A very good example is 
kidney stones.  Conventional wisdom(because clinical trails have not been 
done to come up with an effective prevention), was that restricitng the 
intake of calcium and oxalates was the best way to prevent kidney stones 
from forming.  Clinical trials focused on drugs or ultrasonic blasts to 
breakdown the stone once it formed.  Through the recent New England J of 
Medicine article, we now know that conventional wisdom was wrong, 
increasing calcium intake is better at preventing stone formation than is 
restricting calcium intake.

The conventional wisdom in animal husbandry has been that animals need to 
be reinnoculated with *good* bacteria after coming off antibiotic therapy.
If it makes sense for livestock, why doesn't it make sense for humans 
David?  We are not talking about a dangerous treatment(unless you consider 
yogurt dangerous).  If this were a standard part of medical practice, as 
Gordon R. says it is, then the incidence of GI distress and vaginal yeast 
infections should decline.