Opinion: ‘You don’t want to get better’: the outdated treatment of ME/CFS patients is a national scandal - George Monbiot

https://twitter.com/user/status/1777976323597562366

 

Oh he’s really going for it.
I don’t think they’re going to do an inquiry into themselves, give it another 20 years so the plausible deniability looks reasonable, maybe some key players are dead.

 

Yes it takes a minimum of 20 years to get justice in the UK.
Hillsborough 30 years.
Infected Blood transplants 30+ years.
The Post Office scandal 20+ years.
I'm sure there are many more.

 

I can't speak for others, but I'd settle for powerful voices in the medical profession saying "We got this wrong. Let's try to do better."

Doctors stepping up to be allies, the way they often are for other sick people, would change the picture in so many ways.

 

Trial By Error: Guardian Columnist George Monbiot Discusses His Scathing Critique of the “Biopsychosocial” Approach to ME/CFS and Long Covid

"Earlier today I spoke with George Monbiot, a British investigative reporter and political activist, who has been a columnist for The Guardian for almost 30 years. He and I have been in occasional communication in recent years over an issue of mutual interest—the scandalous mistreatment of patients suffering from the devastating illness (or cluster of illnesses) known as ME/CFS and, more recently, from Long Covid."

https://virology.ws/2024/04/18/tria...ychosocial-approach-to-me-cfs-and-long-covid/

 

That was a great conversation. Sorry I'm not up to write a summary, but what Monbiot said about Science Media Center was far worse than what I had imagined. Am pleased he wants to dive further into it as a journalist.

 

Yes, I found the broader political background, particularly in relation to the Science Media Centre particularly interesting.

Also it is interesting to hear that following Monbiot’s Guardian article there does not seem to have been any significant kickback from the BPS crew other than the handful of comments following the article on line.

 

I hope he writes up something on it, I had edited the “Controversies related to ME/CFS” wikipedia page to add a sentence or two about the science media center-wessley psychosomatic connection in the “researcher harrasment” section, but some people thought there needed to be more sources before adding that was warranted.

 

He wrote about SMC way back when, in early 2000s, I think--completely unrelated to this. I knew it was on his radar and that he had dug into the weird political fringe folks connected to it. I was glad we got to cover how awful that place is.

 

This is George's piece from 2003 about the SMC, https://www.theguardian.com/education/2003/dec/09/highereducation.uk2

 

Actually, I had tried to get him interested in all this a few years ago--pre-Covid--by pumping up the SMC aspects. We had a short exchange and he seemed interested but likely too busy, and nothing came of it. Then he had his encounter with Sharpe, which seemed to have opened his eyes as to what a mess this whole domain was, and that the SMC was doing the same bullshit that he'd seen in other fields.

 

I was really shocked to see Tom Feilden, the journalist George was referring to, who was handed the harassment story by the SMC and then was nominated for that award, and Kate Kelland, both doing promotion for the SMC on its 10th anniversary--each wrote an essay for their booklet about the greatness of the SMC and also participated in video interviews. They were acting as PR agents for a communications outfit that feeds them stories. Extremely unprofessional to act as SMC shills.

 

Superb interview. I never thought I would hear the back story about the honours bestowed on Wessely pulled out like that. Also dealt well with the possible attacks by patients by putting it in a context that is realistic.
Thank you both.

 

Thank you, @JohnTheJack.

I did a bit more work on it, basically using the Word editor to remove all the 'um' type words, and all the instances where words were repeated.

Some of the repeated words do appear in the video (e.g, someone saying "I ... I think"), but quite a few instances might have been autogenerated by the transcribing tool.

So it's now not an exact transcript of the call, but it might be easier to read. I also put in breaks between the timed sections.

 

PS: many, many thanks to David and George too. This is an incredibly useful exposition of the background to the story.