"Am I just tired or is it ME?" Press Association article that has been picked up by some UK & Irish media outlets

Dolphin

Dolphin

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
The largest media outlet that has used it seems to be the Independent newspaper in the UK.

Put the following into a search engine and you should find most or all articles that mention it:
"Dr Anand Patel" "Covid has made ME more"

A version that is freely available is here:
https://www.breakingnews.ie/lifestyle/am-i-just-tired-or-is-it-me-1475549.html

Apologies if it has been discussed elsewhere, I am not up-to-date with this week's news or discussions on the forum.
 
Last edited:
“A quarter of our appointments these days are classed as ‘tired all the time’. It is very difficult to weed out what is what when ME and CFS are groups of symptoms that are bundled together. It is not necessarily something that will cause medical harm, but will cause really significant symptoms to sufferers,” says Patel.
Click to expand...
Interesting definition of 'medical harm' - debilitation and pain to the point where you can't work, can't prepare food, can't get to the bathroom, can't think well seems not to count.
 
“With ME, you may be so tired you can barely stay awake in the day. We are still in the exploratory stage of what does cause it, but if you have had psychological trauma or illness it is more likely to be ME that has caused these prolonged symptoms. It can be hard to find things during tests and scans, but of course, there are conditions we don’t have tests for or are hard to identify,” he explains.
Click to expand...
'he' being Dr Anand Patel. I am constantly surprised at the numbers of people who are happy to stand up and be an expert when they know so little.
 
Hutan said:
Interesting definition of 'medical harm' - debilitation and pain to the point where you can't work, can't prepare food, can't get to the bathroom, can't think well seems not to count.
Click to expand...

This is a horrific take for a human being in general, let alone a doctor. It's really kindergarten levels of logic that are missing here. My 4-yo niece and nephew could explain that by definition having significant symptoms would harm you. If I tell them I can't play with them because my body hurts, they understand that I'm harmed. Apparently it's beyond this doctor though.
 
Apropos, I was surprised by the lack of general news coverage of ME awareness day, at least in the UK. It’s an enormous shame that the press packages prepared by advocates failed to land, and that PA chose to pass this one to a teenage scribbler who spoke to a random doctor rather than doing the most basic research.
 
Biggest problems with the article:
  • ME claimed to be extreme tiredness. No mention of differentiating symptoms like PEM
  • Says to talk to your doctor if you might have ME, without mentioning likelihood of being discriminated against
  • Implies ME causes extreme sleepiness
  • Mentions correlated with psychological trauma without balancing by saying almost all diseases are
  • Claims that ME doesn't always cause "medical harm", which is both false and linguistic hair-splitting
The only redeeming feature is describing ME in language of physical conditions.
 
I agree it's spectacularly bad. They don't even get the list of key symptoms right - they could have got that from the NICE guideline. No mention of PEM, congitive dysfunction, OI, etc.

It's no wonder ME is so hard to diagnose for him if he hasn't bothered to read the NICE guideline and just perpetuates the myth that it's the same as sleepiness. And to consult one 'mens health' doctor for a condition with a predominance of female patients is ridiculous.

I don't think this is just a badly written, ill researched article, I think it's part of a deliberate policy of the BPS people and the likes of the SMC to misinform the public, make the symptoms sound like ordinary tiredness, and give it a psychological spin. It's no accident better info isn't being spread by the media.
 
Last edited:
Trish said:
I don't think this is just a badly written, ill researched article, I think it's part of a deliberate policy of the BPS people and the likes of the SMC to misinform the public, make the symptoms sound like ordinary tiredness, and give it a psychological spin. It's no accident better info isn't being spread by the media.
Click to expand...

That conspiracy theory would need far more than a nonsensical article to support it.

As a bare minimum, you’d need to prove that there are strong links between the commissioning editor and the various bogeymen you suspect of being involved.

There isn’t even much psychologising in the piece, and no handwaving FND neuro-woo. Just an idiotic conflation with TATT.

I don’t think that your reaction is rational. The media’s lack of interest in ME does not mean that it has been nobbled.
 
You may be right that my reaction is inaccurate, but I think it is rational.

I would like to know why they decided to post an article on ME/CFS this week - and who suggested this particular doctor as the 'expert' when he so clearly isn't? On whose advice was such an editorial decision made?

What other articles about ME/CFS do the Press Association have on file that the person who wrote the article might have glanced at to check if they had the story right?

Did someone from the SMC or BPS point them in this direction?

Did the press Association receive any material from more reputable sources around World ME Day activities and opt to use this crap instead?

Things like this don't happen in a vacuum.
 
Trish said:
You may be right that my reaction is inaccurate, but I think it is rational.

I would like to know why they decided to post an article on ME/CFS this week - who suggested this particular doctor as the 'expert' when he so clearly isn't.

What other articles about ME/CFS do the Press Association have on file that the person who wrote the article might have glanced at to check if they had the story right?

Did someone from the SMC or BPS point them in this direction?

Did the press Association receive any material from more reputable sources around World ME Day activities and opt to use this crap instead?

Things like this don't happen in a vacuum.
Click to expand...
How things work:
1. Date pops up in Press Association editorial diary of events.
2. PA Editorial farms out "ME Week" to Imogen Brighty-Potts who hasn't a clue about ME, but can bang out 400 words on any old crap and has a trendy health and fitness Dr in her address file.
3. Imy emails Dr Anand Patel who is only to happy to have his media profile enlarged by writing half Imy's article for her. Anand also hasn't a clue about ME but he's well practiced at writing clickbait.
4. After half an hour's work Imy files her copy. PA editoral punts it onto Legal who punt back as 'not dangerous' and Editoral chucks out so called 'article' to the subscriber mailing list - only the Independent is desperate enough to use the copy.

Did I mention that PA once upon a time was a source of some of the finest journalism the world has seen, but is now just a mechanically recovered meat processor.
 
Trish said:
You may be right that my reaction is inaccurate, but I think it is rational.

I would like to know why they decided to post an article on ME/CFS this week - and who suggested this particular doctor as the 'expert' when he so clearly isn't? On whose advice was such an editorial decision made?

What other articles about ME/CFS do the Press Association have on file that the person who wrote the article might have glanced at to check if they had the story right?

Did someone from the SMC or BPS point them in this direction?

Did the press Association receive any material from more reputable sources around World ME Day activities and opt to use this crap instead?

Things like this don't happen in a vacuum.
Click to expand...



Those are fair questions, although the point about existing articles on file relies on assumptions about workflow and content management that may simply not reflect PA’s operational capabilities: their job is to churn topical pieces out at speed and scale.

But the others are worth asking. Some might best be answered by IBP and some by PA, depending on who posed them. Ideally, it would be the chief executive of one of the ME bodies, although I’d be surprised if they had the time or energy - or even the inclination, considering the dubious content the MEA is happy to promote.

I am firmly of the opinion, though, that lots of things happen in a vacuum. Especially bad journalism, because these days everything is written by youngsters in haste for peanuts and is barely challenged by their editors, who are often equally time-pressed and ignorant. And the person in the street can be assumed to be clueless about ME unless they have direct personal experience - and even then, as likely as not, they have picked up some weird takes on it.
 
CRG said:
How things work:
1. Date pops up in Press Association editorial diary of events.
2. PA Editorial farms out "ME Week" to Imogen Brighty-Potts who hasn't a clue about ME, but can bang out 400 words on any old crap and has a trendy health and fitness Dr in her address file.
3. Imy emails Dr Anand Patel who is only to happy to have his media profile enlarged by writing half Imy's article for her. Anand also hasn't a clue about ME but he's well practiced at writing clickbait.
4. After half an hour's work Imy files her copy. PA editoral punts it onto Legal who punt back as 'not dangerous' and Editoral chucks out so called 'article' to the subscriber mailing list - only the Independent is desperate enough to use the copy.

Did I mention that PA once upon a time was a source of some of the finest journalism the world has seen, but is now just a mechanically recovered meat processor.
Click to expand...


All this, except that my guess would be legal is invoked only when there’s editorial concern, rather than being an integral part of workflow.
 
Trish said:
You may be right that my reaction is inaccurate, but I think it is rational.

I would like to know why they decided to post an article on ME/CFS this week - and who suggested this particular doctor as the 'expert' when he so clearly isn't? On whose advice was such an editorial decision made?

What other articles about ME/CFS do the Press Association have on file that the person who wrote the article might have glanced at to check if they had the story right?

Did someone from the SMC or BPS point them in this direction?

Did the press Association receive any material from more reputable sources around World ME Day activities and opt to use this crap instead?

Things like this don't happen in a vacuum.
Click to expand...
Agree. Any doctor in this day and age who writes an article for the press which equates ME with 'or am I just tired', shockingly and wrongly claims it's "not necessarily something that will cause medical harm", and still relates it to psychological issues in face of the corrected NICE Guidelines, is either a monumentally ignorant buffoon or has cobbled it together to an agenda of disinformation. My guess is the latter, especially as its publication coincides with ME Awareness Day. It's real heartsink stuff.
 
Solstice said:
This is a horrific take for a human being in general, let alone a doctor. It's really kindergarten levels of logic that are missing here. My 4-yo niece and nephew could explain that by definition having significant symptoms would harm you. If I tell them I can't play with them because my body hurts, they understand that I'm harmed. Apparently it's beyond this doctor though.
Click to expand...
My impression from this is that they whenever they say medical harm they simply mean something they're obligated to act on. Medical harm = have to go to the hospital (or at the very least an urgent appointment to a clinic) where they have to do something because it meets their legal criteria to have to act. Basically, what it means for them by way of obligations.

What it means for the patient they don't have a clue, anything happening outside of clinics and hospitals might as well be happening in a different universe. They don't know about any of that unless they happen to have personal experience of it. But they do know that they are rarely obligated to act in a medical facility, and that's where they do 100% of their day job, which is all they know about his.

I do agree that it's not credible that this isn't propaganda. That they use ME awareness day to spread disinformation is just that extra touch of being absolute jerks.
 
Last edited:
It might be that there are some parallels with how the UK BPS school has approached ME/CFS but I think what we see in the PA article is amuch wider problem, which is the commoditisation of media metastasising the commoditisation of everything the media touches. Medicine is not an easily commoditised product so instead we are given the quickly digested "health and well being" provided to us by the gentle authority of the always immaculate but casually dressed and smiling Dr Patel: Dr Anand Patel and Dr Anand Patel and Dr Anand Patel and Dr Anand Patel and Dr Anand Patel.

Of course Patel is failing as a GP by putting his name to misleading guff about ME/CFS but there's no commoditisation, and so no profit for either the media or its chosen player (Patel), in referencing NICE, or talking about all the unpleasant stuff around illness as opposed to joyfull 'wellness'. PA/Imy Brighty-Potts have crafted a wellness story full of positivity and hope that PA and its subscribing businesses see as a desirable read. A bunch of miserable patienst, stressed medics and struggling researchers is a low value commodity that just isn't going to be preferred to a health and well being shtick. This is something that has yet to be addressed by ME/CFS advocacy, and ME month/week/day inevitably throws it into sharp relief, but IMO it's far more of a long term challenge than than a BPS perspective.
 
The last of those links you gave to Dr Patel is to an article:
Centre for Men’s Health’s Dr Anand Patel presents latest Embarrassing Bodies TV series
So basically they chose him for their advisor on ME/CFS just because he's a TV doctor. How ridiculous.
 
CRG said:
It might be that there are some parallels with how the UK BPS school has approached ME/CFS but I think what we see in the PA article is amuch wider problem, which is the commoditisation of media metastasising the commoditisation of everything the media touches. Medicine is not an easily commoditised product so instead we are given the quickly digested "health and well being" provided to us by the gentle authority of the always immaculate but casually dressed and smiling Dr Patel: Dr Anand Patel and Dr Anand Patel and Dr Anand Patel and Dr Anand Patel and Dr Anand Patel.

Of course Patel is failing as a GP by putting his name to misleading guff about ME/CFS but there's no commoditisation, and so no profit for either the media or its chosen player (Patel), in referencing NICE, or talking about all the unpleasant stuff around illness as opposed to joyfull 'wellness'. PA/Imy Brighty-Potts have crafted a wellness story full of positivity and hope that PA and its subscribing businesses see as a desirable read. A bunch of miserable patienst, stressed medics and struggling researchers is a low value commodity that just isn't going to be preferred to a health and well being shtick. This is something that has yet to be addressed by ME/CFS advocacy, and ME month/week/day inevitably throws it into sharp relief, but IMO it's far more of a long term challenge than than a BPS perspective.
Click to expand...

Joyful positive wellness, yes, but also inspirational #wellbeing and empathy-signalling #worklifebalance, both of which are rife in fluffy media and on social platforms, and provide hooks on which to hang “fatigue”.

I agree with you massively.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom