(Daily Telegraph) “How I became a target for the ME militants” by Dr Michael Fitzpatrick

paywalled
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/doctors-diary/became-target-militants/

How I became a target for the ME militants

The current row over Nice guidelines on chronic fatigue syndrome is strikingly similar to the one I found myself caught up in 20 years ago

DR MICHAEL FITZPATRICK26 September 2021 • 5:10pm
It is nearly 20 years since I became inadvertently involved in the ‘ME wars’, the long-running conflict between campaigners suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome and the leading doctors in the field. Hostilities have erupted again during the summer as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) suspended publication of a revised edition of its guidelines on managing the condition, amid a spate of resignations from the guidelines committee and recriminations in the press....

 

What a complete load of tosh.

 

Is 3 a spate now?

So I could have a spate of digestive biscuits, and it be understood?

and yes, tosh.

Didn't there used to be severe penalties for calling a Countess 'preposterous', let alone in print in a national rag, were people outside the room may see it?

Possibly promotion sideways, to court jester, forced to wear a preposterous hat, and wave a preposterous stick??

 

A story wearing rather thin.

 

"ME" becomes "chronic fatigue syndrome" becomes "chronic fatigue". How to minimise and dismiss a medical condition in two short paragraphs.

 

Honestly there are no words for this kind of offensive hubris, this is pure ignorant bigotry and incompetence. This is someone utterly incapable of understanding that other people have a different perspective and life experience than their own, makes everything about him even when it doesn't concern him at all. We're just street litter to this guy. Someone critized him accurately decades ago and that's just unacceptable.

And the substance of being a target? Someone wrote things criticizing what he says. That's all it ever is, not content with destroying our lives, they want to to keep us in oppressed silence, will put imaginary discomfort above millions of lives.

Honestly a big FU to the Telegraph for publishing this ignorant narcissistic tripe, especially by someone making everything about themselves and for which the only reaction is: who even is this dude? Because everything they say is projection, so when they say that ME means "me me me!", they are of course projecting because to them it's all about their little selves.

 

2002 (following publication of the CMO Working Group on CFS/ME):

The making of a new disease
Michael Fitzpatrick on why the medical profession's latest ruling on ME (or chronic fatigue syndrome) is nothing short of disastrous

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/feb/07/medicalscience.healthandwellbeing

 

https://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=141

Dr Michael Fitzpatrick

 

I think it may be quite useful for this sort of disinformation to come out in a national newspaper just now. The people at NICE involved with the new guideline are likely to redouble their commitment to sticking to their guns.

Having spent four years working with Adam, Sally, Saran, and Charles I should think Peter Barry and Ilora Finlay would find this sort of nonsense deeply insulting.

 

"Because some patients complained of flu-like symptoms, the term "post-viral fatigue syndrome" was also used."

no, it was because people got the illness post-viral infection.

"This is an edited version of an article first published on spiked"......not surprised

 

https://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=142

No big surprise here, the connection between him, the Foxes and the SMC. Birds of a feather.

 

https://www.spiked-online.com/2002/02/14/debating-the-disease/

Debating the disease
Dr Michael Fitzpatrick replies to his critics on ME.
14 February 2002

 

Dame Clare Gerada has given talks at the IoI and is a pal of Clare Fox.


https://www.theguardian.com/education/2003/dec/09/highereducation.uk2

Invasion of the entryists
George Monbiot

9 December 2003

Living Marxism, Frank Furedi, Spiked, Fox, IoI, Sense about Science, Science Media Centre et al...

 

By strange coincidence the Sunday Telegraph pre pandemic circulation numbers were exactly the same as the top figure for UK ME/CFS prevalence. We don't know how many STel's are actually sold now because its owners pulled out of the scheme that has measured newspaper sales for the last half century - something to do with STel's sales decline by 500% since 2104. For non UKer's not familiar with the paper it has long been know as the Sunday Torygraph for its rabidly right wing articles and preposterously anachronistic perspective.

 

Ah, Sense about Science, who are still very confused about science. And Spiked. So no doubt just putting in a favor to his mate Wessely to influence NICE. The old boys' club clubs along, doesn't care that it's clubbing sick people, in fact seems to enjoy it.

Are SAS still in the business of attacking patient populations for fun? Certainly one of their trustees is.

 

It really has, so much that the author listed all the success this gave Wessely at the end of the article. It was very successful for them. At our expense, but they got more than they could have hoped for on their own merit, and that's just success to some people.

Same thing for Horton and the whole "well, Lancet hasn't retracted PACE so it's still good". His responsibility in the Wakefield MMR paper is somehow always glossed over, he's still showered in unearned awards. When failure is rewarded as success, you certainly end up with a whole lot of glitzy failure.

 

What's in an acronym!