Thanks to LKW for finding this one!
* * *
I wish I could determine precisely when this article was written, as it
would be helpful to know historically how long some, like the author Del
Kennedy, have realized exactly what is going on with the ME and CFS
'blending' these past 20 years (since the USA CDC made up 'CFS' (Fukada, et
al) in 1988.)
Certainly it's been clear to serious ME advocates like myself that others
before us and around the world have fought the good fight all along, against
the ever-increasing and skewed vested interest efforts. LKW
~~~
Turning the Tide
All over the UK, there are thousands of people debilitated and disabled by
this horrific disease, some bedbound, some in wheelchairs, many in constant
pain. But because their condition cannot yet be detected in a test-tube at
the local pathology lab, all of these desperately ill and suffering people
are labelled liars or loonies; all of the scientific evidence that there is
a real illness at work is dismissed out of hand; and those who highlight
this grotesque injustice are labelled paranoid and hysterical.
The history of the cover-up of ME by the Medical Establishment over the last
45 years is a nightmare story like no other. Quiet, painstaking scientific
research has been stonewalled by the Medical Establishment in favour of
contemptuous power-politics : denigration by design. If this were a
scientific debate, there would be no contest. ME Denial is a political
issue.
What makes the battle over the recognition of ME so significant is that we
seem to have a situation where the majority of the medical profession have
lost the humility to say "we don't know", and are prepared instead to defend
against any suggestion that there might be any ailment that they cannot yet
detect 'in a test tube' on a per-patient basis. Technology has not only come
to dominate intellectual endeavour in the field of medicine; it seems to
have displaced it. 'Somatoform disorder' (psycho-somatosis or now,
'functional somatic syndrome') is the dustbin diagnosis at the end of a
battery of tests. Any other diagnosis requires positive evidence; the
diagnosis of somatoform disorder requires none. This is not science, and
should never be allowed to masquerade as such.
It seems to me that the only way out of the present impasse is to ensure
that every study into the cause or treatment of ME is conducted exclusively
with the most severely disabled sufferers. We have to get back to basics :
back to the original definition of ME - Melvin Ramsay's. I am sure there are
many people whose lives have been devastated by this disease who would yet
fall outside Ramsay's narrow definition of ME. Many would fall within it in
the morning, and outside it in the afternoon, or vice-versa; my own
condition used to fluctuate between extremes.
But the more exclusive our definition, the more the psychiatrists' absurd,
nightmare bangwagon will be confronted with reality. Let's make them face
the truth. Let's put those in wheelchairs first.
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a term introduced in 1988 (32 years after the
discovery of ME) by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control (CDC). It was felt
at first by many British ME sufferers to be transparently contrived in order
to denigrate our illness and downgrade its priority below a level that might
warrant serious funding of research. Unfortunately, the two major British ME
charities were of another opinion.
NOTE: ME was 'discovered' earlier; it was 'formally recognized' later on
then. LKW
Everything that has happened since then has confirmed this first grassroots
impression. The new name was followed by new and ~broader~ diagnostic
criteria, until it became possible to conduct a study into CFS that might include not one single genuine ME sufferer.
Now there is a move to group a whole host of ludicrously unrelated
conditions (IBS, CFS, PMT, FMS, Temporomandipular Joint Pain, Tension
Headache, Atypical Chest Pain, MCS and Globus Hysterictis) together under an
even larger umbrella - "functional somatic syndromes". It's high time we
threw a spanner in the works of this drivel-factory; it's time we returned
to Ramsay.
Magna est veritas et praevalebit
(great is truth, and shall prevail).
Del Kennedy
Posted on: http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/tide.html
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