Definitely. First play through without the Ghoul Mask I'd burn through a lot of ammo and guns repairs. Now you can save the firepower for the muties, raiders, etc. And the ghouls don't attack the follower either but for now my follower is Charon (a ghoul) and I need to see what happens when I pickup Fawkes.
Yea they are great backup too. I was in a building filled with feral ghouls and a Talon Merc followed me in. Big mistake, bout 5 Feral Ghouls tore him up. So I've discovered it's better to just use friendlies as backup and skip the NPC all together.
On more then 1 occasion I used Feral Ghouls to help me fight. Now I just wished I had Animal Friends perk. Unfortunately my Science rating is way too low atm and I'm already coming up to 21. So I probably have to get an expansion pack then get the perk on the way to 30.