Norwegian professor on ME and gender dystrophy

Professor emeritus Ivar Sønbø Kristiansen from the Department of Health Management and Health Economics has written a blogpost in a medical newspaper where he draw parallels between gender dystrophy and ME as fashion illnesses.

I post this mostly for its oddity - but feel genuinely sorry for the gender dystrophy patients which seems to meet as much, if not more, prejudice as ME patients.

Dagens Medisin: Kjønnsdystrofi - den nye ME?
google translation: Gender dystrophy - the new ME?

Based on my views above, I have long thought that the ME epidemic eventually will culminate and be replaced by another, socially contagious state. A chronicle in Aftenposten was therefore thought provoking. Here Anne Wæhre and Kim Alexander Tønseth at the National Hospital claim that Norway has an "explosive increase" in the number of teenagers who are dissatisfied with the gender their own body has.

...
My hypothesis, however, is that the explanation is social infection. Gender dysphoria "infects" in the same way as railway spine and ME. The question is then how to deal with the "epidemic."

 

This guy has never worked with PwME or any of the conditions he dismissed so easily.

Who are all these people who think they can make themselves important by promoting their unfounded, made up beliefs? He doesn't even bother trying to find any sources, he's just listing his own personal pet theories like this is 1820.

Ivar Sønbø Kristiansen, University of Oslo profile page

 

Funny, I thought that labelling patients as having a fashionable illness was itself quite fashionable in certain university departments among confused old men who think it's about being tired all the time. Although looking at his picture, this guy doesn't have the excuse of old age.

 

I don't understand this idea that seems to be floating around nordic countries that ME is a fashion illness. Most sufferers have ME for years before they get diagnosed or even hear of the condition. The evidence simply doesn't check out on any level.

 

I wonder if they believe nobody talked about ME until they heard about it for the very first time?

 

@Kalliope that's right, they probably think they are revolutionizing medicine by their very existence!

 

That's probably it but yet again they are mistaking correlation for causation.

Either that or they really do believe that all of us have superhero-type powers, so that we could look into the future, find out that ME would become "fashionable", decide all the misery that comes with it looks like fun, and from that point forth pretend that we have it, in order to be able to receive all those fabulous secondary benefits that come from being ill - like unemployment, loss of status, disbelief of family, friends and colleagues etc etc. I'm sure I could have used the ability to look 30 years into the future to much better use.

 

@Andy obviously you discovered that FM was already going out of style and had to become creative to stay ahead of the crowd.

 

Well, as a child, I was undecided between leprosy or scurvy, actually, but, bang crash chomp, I was bitten by a radioactive and rabid psychology professor and for a brief moment I was able to see the future, and obviously my pre-adolescent interest was "what illness will be 'fashionable' in 2018?" - the rest is history!

 

Edward Shorter used to talk about how CFS was again going out of 'fashion' at the end of the 90s, as it became viewed as 'psychological'. Instead, we just ended up with twenty years of patients being stigmatised and mistreated.

These Norwegians are twenty years late to a bad idea, but still managing to write with the same smug tone.

 

It's just so offensive. They're revealing the bigotry behind their ideology here, I believe. Being trans is hardly new--there are histories of trans or equivalent identities going back millennia. It's just that we have the vocabulary to talk about it now, and an ever-increasing population. There will be more people who are trans simply because it's a matter of percentages, and there are now more people talking about trans issues.

As for ME, I suspect it's been with us for a long time. But most likely people withered away in less developed times and cultures.

 

I suspect this is true. I have met one or two people who reckon an eldery female relative had it. A grandmother or aunt who used lurk in an armchair by a fire and rarely did or said much. They were known to be not very well, but it just wasn't discussed.

Of course, in those days there wouldn't have been much access to medical care and elderly ladies often lived with other family members.

 

Exactly. For me this is what has always refuted these sorts of ideas.
Maybe if more of the public becomes aware of the condition, some people will 'latch on' in some psychopathological way. I suspect this is vanishingly rare at the moment and would remain a tiny minority even if everybody knew all about the condition. It's not really worth faking it, and has little attraction as an 'identity' to play around with. Nothing to be concerned about.
Science starts with observation. These people seem to be formulating hypotheses based on presupposed 'observation' without actually attempting to observe reality. The downstream effects are both preposterous and disastrous.

 

I’d heard of ME before I got sick, but the general thread of what I ‘knew’ was around the whole ‘yuppie flu’ thing. Now some people might call me contrary but I like a quiet, non-confrontational life, so there’s no way I’d have ‘chosen’ ME.

 

If ME is a fashion statement I think I am getting it very wrong. For fashion to work it needs to be displayed, but over the twenty five years of my ME my social circle has steadily declined. I see only a small fraction of the number of people I did in the past, and I can regularly go for a week or ten days without seeing anyone at all.

There can be times when I would be socially better off in solitary confinement in prison. But perhaps Prof Kristiansen thinks being such as a political prisoner under an oppressive regime is also a fashion statement.

 

Another similar common view, at least among Swedish neurologists, is to describe ME as a "cultural manifestation/expression" (kulturyttring) ...

 

there is an old English once trendy saying "pompous twits will always be pompous twits" and they prove it on a regular basis by opening their mouths.

 

I think its an effective article, in the sense that it presents a laughable caricature of that particular mindset.

Most people who don't know anything about ME will be shocked at the way Kristiansen arrogantly dismisses transgender issues, and will be immediately sceptical of everything else he says.