News from the CFS Doctor

[*Emerald*]

I dont think you sound like a loon. I think there has been a cover up to prevent millions of compensation pay outs world wide for wrong diagnosis and inadequate care/treatment. I think they know exactly what causes m.e but cant work out why

[Wynton]

Yes billoddie - I do not know why I did not respond to your post sometime before but it definitely deserves a response. You put very sharply the things that make this "syndrome" or whatever both so debilitating and so isolating. I empathise very much with what you are saying although I have only had CFS for 2½ years now and I cannot begin to imagine the effect it has had on your life.

I just want to throw out an opinion/word of caution: I think it is dangerous, and honestly even more isolating, to think that there is in any way a conspiracy against us with ME/CFS. There's an important difference between politics and science. Politics reflects the will of the people, and the people are often misinformed, undereducated, bigoted - wrong. Politics has been brutal to CFS. Misinformation related to CFS is rampant; undereducation is a huge problem even among medical professionals; and I would even go so far as to compare being judged as lazy by our healthy peers to bigotry. (It's a stereotype after all - the person who doesn't have much energy and doesn't accomplish much is the stereotypical lazy person. People judge the book by its cover and make assumptions.) On the other hand, science ("knowledge") is by definition true. Politics can help speed or slow science, but science only progresses in one direction: towards the answers. There are no scientists "covering up" any cures. First, that breaks all the rules of being a scientist, and second, why would they even want to do that? What I think (or am sure) is likely the case is that scientists have not received enough money to find the cure, and/or this is merely a very complicated issue and their efforts have not (yet) bourne fruit.

Sorry for my rants but I have a lot of faith in science and have recently been very disappointed to see science reduced to another "opinion"... as seen in the US when people say "Scientists say global warming is a threat, my politician says it isn't..." as if they both carried the same weight!

Good luck with the gupta programme DontJudgeM.E! I like how you speak of your journey to recovery. Hopefully soon this will all seem a distant nightmare. Take care billoddie and emerald!