Encephalitis lethargica

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3930727.stm

Came across the above article after strolling through the ICD-10CM. 
Delighted that Professor John Oxford, Drs. Russell Dale and Andrew 
Church were open minded enough to study this illness and not blame it 
on hysteria.

  How many ME patients have been tested for the variant of 
streptococcus bacteria, diploccoccus, which can cause the massive 
immune reaction which can cause Encephalitis lethargica?

Some practitioners, students of the "youngest science", might want to 
re-think their insistence on Evidence Based Medicine.  Why aren't the 
brains of deceased ME sufferers being studied as a matter of course?  
Who can say for certain that ME is not related to Encephalitis 
Lethargica.  It's the easiest thing in the world to postulate  that 
some conditions are caused by 'hysteria'.  No Evidenced Based proof 
is needed for that conclusion.  All that is needed is an absence of 
evidence to the contrary.  Absence of evidence there will be if the 
medical establishments, increasingly run by governments, refuse to 
test individuals with ME.

Perhaps there is a different way to treat those who fair poorly with 
graded exercise and CBT. Instead making the ad hoc decision that the 
problem is is that the patients "think" they have a 'real 
illness'  ( a very Victorian approach), research funding should be 
given to those scientists who have found significant abnormalities in 
patients with ME.

The current situation, where in doctors are allowed - even encouraged 
- to blame the victims of this scourge for their maladies will be 
looked at in wonderment in the not to far distant future.  
Governments which support these misguided medics should look to 
history.  The scenario has been played too many times.

Jean Harrison

* * *

AMEN!  Polio, MS, and AIDS, which were once thought to be psychological in origin, have been proven to have physical causes.  Eventually, CFS will also achieve the same status, and we will have a record of those who took the easy way out andblamed the patient, thinking there was no need to do any testing. 

Or who were afraid that if they did the tests the patient requested, they'd have to reconsider their own "aberrant illness beliefs", and face the fact that this is not a hysterical, hypochondriac woman, but an educated professional who is telling the truth that a rogue virus changed her life forever.