With a few noteworthy exceptions, I have given up on the mainstream media ever being much help to us, or even merely not making it worse.
Media is full of bias these days and less about thorough research of facts. I have thought about starting our own press agency. But I think I am too unwell.
This is the Pandora's box that medicine has thrown wide open. Many of the quacks who push the worst woowoo pseudoscience have suggested such things, and they have also been welcomed into the broad medical paradigm because of the parts they like. Especially as this is broadly applied to chronic pain, why can't it be true for RA? There is literally no reason why not when the same "mind-body" arguments are applied. Not when the paradigm explicitly overlooks etiology. If it works for everything, then it works for everything! Pain is plastic! Rewire your brain!! They keep choosing to overlook just how easy it is to apply the same pseudoscience onto everything. Yesterday there was some conference featuring Trump and RFK Jr where they talked about how autism has exploded, in a clearly unnatural way, and is likely mostly caused by lifestyle choices. A view that was long held by the medical profession, it doesn't matter that some dispute this openly now, it used to be "common knowledge". A view that can be applied as is to many chronic diseases, as long as one overlooks the parts they don't like. Which has been mainstream medicine for decades. We've just been through 5 years of medical professionals and public health authorities telling everyone that getting COVID "the natural way" is better and safer. Why wouldn't people apply this to measles, polio, or any other pathogens? Predictably, they are! Even the death and morbidity rates aren't too different. The vast majority of people who contract measles and polio will be fine (as long as one doesn't look too hard into it). We've "beaten COVID" this way so maybe it's the way to eradicate those, by building a wall of herd immunity. The conspiracy fantasy communities don't even need to invent their own reasoning and messaging, they can straight up quote eminent professors of medicine. They literally seem to never think of where slippery slopes lead to, confident that they can keep controlling everything. But they have lost control years ago, now what most people hear about this stuff comes from influencers. And on the issue of chronic illness there is zero separation between what the worst quacks are peddling and respected professors of medicine. They are destroying the credibility of medicine and are entirely oblivious to it. And they will even be blaming influencers who simply repeat the same message as them. Human stupidity truly is infinite.
I don’t get what was the point of the whole program. It was totally devoid of science and put people into a group of probably unrelated disorders. It had a whiff of Netflix Afflicted about it. The person who recovered from rheumatoid and ‘chronic fatigue’ through ‘holistic’ treatment and an attitude change was bizarre. Appearing was an integrative GP who charges a small fortune….. A bit disheartening.
