Desperate Diseases and Plasmapheresis

For any disease there is a limited number of treatments that are known to be effective. When those fail, the physician has to consider alternatives that are either new and unproved or ancient and of uncertain benefit. After enduring a chronic disease and failing to respond to the standard therapies, patients can become desperate. Some discouraged patients visit a number of physicians or consider unorthodox alternatives. When the patient still asks, "What else is there?" the physician may be tempted to offer an experimental medication, a surgical procedure of uncertain benefit, or some other major but unproved intervention. For many . . .