Sly Saint
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Introduction
Medically Unexplained Symptoms (MUS) are somewhat hidden in plain sight, a ‘central, strangely silent, area of medical practice’. [1] MUS are often talked about alongside contested illnesses, but unlike with MUS, a certain dissent is immediately evident when contested illnesses are discussed.
For example, shortly after I had started working on a thesis about epistemic injustice in relation to MUS, I witnessed a media campaign on myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). In the campaign, a British psychiatrist claimed that scientists researching treatments for CFS were being silenced or harassed by online activists, that some were ‘leaving the field’ as a result, and that consequently, ‘patients may lose out’.
These online activists were, however, reportedly also patients themselves and their efforts an affront to science, likened to climate change denial and the anti vaccine movement. [2]
Surely, this is ill-conceived patient activism? An act of folly? An unsuspecting reader would be forgiven this impression. I would argue instead that this anecdote is an example of epistemic injustice. In this article, I will outline the way this form of injustice can arise in the doctor-patient dynamic when MUS enter the picture. By the end, I hope to have clarified how this phenomenon relates to the anecdote given here.
Additionally, in the interest of current relevance, I will insert an emerging topic into which this discussion can be extended: doctors with persistent symptoms in the aftermath of the first wave of the raging COVID-19 pandemic.
https://locus.ou.nl/locus-dossier-w...lly-unexplained-symptoms-jenny-van-der-palen/
Medically Unexplained Symptoms (MUS) are somewhat hidden in plain sight, a ‘central, strangely silent, area of medical practice’. [1] MUS are often talked about alongside contested illnesses, but unlike with MUS, a certain dissent is immediately evident when contested illnesses are discussed.
For example, shortly after I had started working on a thesis about epistemic injustice in relation to MUS, I witnessed a media campaign on myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). In the campaign, a British psychiatrist claimed that scientists researching treatments for CFS were being silenced or harassed by online activists, that some were ‘leaving the field’ as a result, and that consequently, ‘patients may lose out’.
These online activists were, however, reportedly also patients themselves and their efforts an affront to science, likened to climate change denial and the anti vaccine movement. [2]
Surely, this is ill-conceived patient activism? An act of folly? An unsuspecting reader would be forgiven this impression. I would argue instead that this anecdote is an example of epistemic injustice. In this article, I will outline the way this form of injustice can arise in the doctor-patient dynamic when MUS enter the picture. By the end, I hope to have clarified how this phenomenon relates to the anecdote given here.
Additionally, in the interest of current relevance, I will insert an emerging topic into which this discussion can be extended: doctors with persistent symptoms in the aftermath of the first wave of the raging COVID-19 pandemic.
https://locus.ou.nl/locus-dossier-w...lly-unexplained-symptoms-jenny-van-der-palen/
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