Cc: Rod Liddle
Rod Liddle's punchy command to M.E, sufferers ('Shoot the medical
messenger -- see if that'll cure you', Rod Liddle Comment, Sunday Times,
31 July 2011) presumes that every last one of them is a hate-filled,
anarchic, activist who, if only they would take the correct treatment
prescribed, would recover and would drop the unrealistic notion that
there is a physical cause of their illness. This Research Psychologist,
diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis 23 years ago, posits an
alternative view that: death threats are unlikely to come from an M.E,
patient but other sources; treatments offered - Cognitive Behaviour
Therapy (CBT) and Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) - are ineffective, or
make a majority worse and that a monopoly of this psychiatric approach
is diverting attention and funding from promising biomedical research
which will provide effective outcomes. Both cannot be right.
An intelligent journalist, like a judge or hard-nosed scientist, would
insist on an independent examination of the evidence by people with no
vested interest in the outcome and look for positive results in terms of
recovery rates of patients and return to a previously normally healthy
life.The worst approach would be for Rod to tackle another subject next
week, leaving only one side covered, without listening to another view,
or permitting a fair right of reply.
There is a precedent set by other illnesses, for example Multiple
Sclerosis, that they are presumed to have a psychiatric cause until a
physical one is found, which M.E. sufferers are following. It is likely
that a physical cause will be proved one day in the lab but, until then
and with total reliance on the word of those whose careers depend on it
going unchallenged, there will continue to be chronic suffering, despair
and preventable deaths.
Yours sincerely
drjohngreensmith@mecommunitytrust.org
Dr John H Greensmith
ME Community Trust.org
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