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

[chrisb]

That is so odd that some sort of irony , or joke must be suspected. Though just what is hard to say.,​

 

[Barry]

Thank you for that there is something really wrong with that guy just have a look at the following from your link:

He is trying to say that my is not a physical disease despite all the abnormalities because:
"On the other hand, there is also a long list of conditions that were once believed to have an organic cause but are now considered to have a psychosocial basis:...and, most notoriously, drapetomania (the inexplicable tendency of slaves in the American South to run away from their masters)." So according to him it is inexplicable that slaves want to have their freedom back.

And how about ...

On the other hand, there is also a long list of conditions that were once believed to have an organic cause but are now considered to have a psychosocial basis: miners’ nystagmus, railway spine (superseded in the age of the car by whiplash injuries)

So whiplash injury has a psychosocial basis?! Just because a few chancers may try it on to get an insurance payout, does not mean that whiplash injury is not a real physical injury. What is the fellah on?

 

[Barry]

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

Interestingly in there he says:

I do not claim to be an authority on ME/CFS.

Well he got that right then. Does an awful lot of pretending to be one though doesn't he.

 

[John Mac]

I really don't understand why all of these people come out of the Revolutionary Communist Party/Living Marxism. What is the ideological connection? I seems if you go so far to the left you can end up entering the far right. The extremists on either side are obsessed with 'freedom' over everything else but what else do they actually believe in??? Themselves maybe. (Not expecting answers to these questions, I suspect it doesn't really make any logical sense.)

I wonder how many of these supposed communists were in fact infiltrators paid by the security services to find out what these organizations were up to. If the security services weren't infiltrating them then they weren't doing their job properly.
Then when communism collapsed and the threat had gone away what were these 'fake leftists' to do, they were now potentially out of work so maybe the state can use/employ them in other ways.
I guess many of these people were of the 'right' all along but now they can show their true colours.
I suspect Wessely is probably one of them, a Marxist knighted at the request of the Ministry of Defence, very strange.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

I really don't understand why all of these people come out of the Revolutionary Communist Party/Living Marxism. What is the ideological connection? I seems if you go so far to the left you can end up entering the far right.

As others have indicated there are many ways in which far left and far right converge - Orwell is full of it - but I think this is something unrelated.

This is simply a group of people who have found solace in the idea that they belong to an elite of minds who are one step cleverer than everyone else on big issues. At one time to be a Marxist was a way to be one step cleverer. It was in 1942 when my mother was a communist briefly. Presumably by 1970 you had to be a slightly special sort of Marxist. Since then, being cleverer on tobacco, nutrition, GM crops, climate have been popular. It seems to be a sort of competition to be the people who have a slightly cleverer way to interpret whatever holy scrolls are to be interpreted. Hence the move into Sense About Science and so on. It doesn't really have anything to do with right or left wing.

 

[SNT Gatchaman]

Thank you for that there is something really wrong with that guy just have a look at the following from your link:

"On the other hand, there is also a long list of conditions that were once believed to have an organic cause but are now considered to have a psychosocial basis:...and, most notoriously, drapetomania (the inexplicable tendency of slaves in the American South to run away from their masters)."

I had to read this and the wikipedia entry twice over and it's... something. An astonishing admission/insight into this author that he would highlight that as his cardinal example.

Even leaving aside the utter ludicrousness of the original conjecture, it doesn't even stack up within the author's own context. He is using it as an example of an "organic illness" that was subsequently shown to be psychosocial (i.e. social). Where in the original (deeply troubled) definition of drapetomania is this supposed organic component? They only talk about an "inappropriate" relationship between master/overseer and slave by "treating them as equals".

Even referencing drapetomania in his 2002 Spiked article is quite a tell in my view. I would be surprised if any but, shall-we-say, "historians of the antebellum South" would have even heard of the term.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

And of course those who build their persona and social identity out of accumulating contrarian beliefs are likely to expect everyone else to collect beliefs.

The difference from their own case being that those beliefs will be wrong - since the holders do not belong to the enlightened elite.

 

[Tia]

As others have indicated there are many ways in which far left and far right converge - Orwell is full of it - but I think this is something unrelated.

This is simply a group of people who have found solace in the idea that they belong to an elite of minds who are one step cleverer than everyone else on big issues. At one time to be a Marxist was a way to be one step cleverer. It was in 1942 when my mother was a communist briefly. Presumably by 1970 you had to be a slightly special sort of Marxist. Since then, being cleverer on tobacco, nutrition, GM crops, climate have been popular. It seems to be a sort of competition to be the people who have a slightly cleverer way to interpret whatever holy scrolls are to be interpreted. Hence the move into Sense About Science and so on. It doesn't really have anything to do with right or left wing.

Yes, I think that sums it up well.

 

[DokaGirl]

@rvallee

Thank you for your post, including points about professional responsibility. That is certainly the idea, and the ideal.

However, in my own experience, let alone that of many others, it's not the practice. Medical errors of significance and harm, can often be ignored. There is no redress for patients.

I've only seen some resolution to poor practice when colleagues of like standing rise up and sanction the miscreant.

ETA: removed "go"

 

[DokaGirl]

Thank you for that there is something really wrong with that guy just have a look at the following from your link:

He is trying to say that my is not a physical disease despite all the abnormalities because:
"On the other hand, there is also a long list of conditions that were once believed to have an organic cause but are now considered to have a psychosocial basis:...and, most notoriously, drapetomania (the inexplicable tendency of slaves in the American South to run away from their masters)." So according to him it is inexplicable that slaves want to have their freedom back.

Thank you @Mark Vink for this.

And, where is this LONG list of supposed organic illnesses, later found to be psychological? Not a very long list in the article.

I've never heard of drapetomania, but why in the world would this be considered an illness of any type, or an inexplicable action, as in running away from one 's master?

Outrageous! Of course from the master's point of view, perhaps inexplicable, and an illness of a sort, but from a just and ethical point of view running for one's very life!

This example is interesting. Perhaps we can see "the master" in the issue at hand...

 

[Sean]

I think people like Fitzpatrick and the whole RCP crowd are just attention-seekers, who simply can't stand being ignored. They cannot do constructive peace-time, so they generate destructive conflict instead as a substitute. Politics is full of these kind of people.

 

[Esther12]

One consequence of my single article on ME/chronic fatigue syndrome in 2002 was that I became a target of vilification by ME activists. One devoted an entire chapter of a book on the subject to scurrilous abuse, scornfully labelling me – among others – as a ‘Wessely lieutenant’. At the time I did not know Simon Wessely, then a pioneering researcher in this area and, as such, a bête noire to the ME campaigners, but I have subsequently been disappointed to discover that neither pension nor campaign medals are available.

I've not been able to find a book with this ‘Wessely lieutenant’ claim. But if it was written after Fitzpatrick wrote on ME/CFS in 2002, but before he had met Wessely, it must have been quickly written and published. Wessely appeared with Fitzpatrick at this Spiked event in May 2002:

http://web.archive.org/web/20030608101443/http://www.spiked-online.com/11September/index.stm

You can get a sense of Wessely's concerns from his Spiked article just before the conference: http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006D903.htm

As most will know, Wessely has a number of other associations with those connected to the Spiked/Living Marxism network.

 

[Esther12]

I couldn't find online the full version of the Fitzpatrcik column originally published on Spiked, and then edited for the Guardian, but it's archieve here, with extra bits like:

'Self-pity and self-deception are the great enemies of Mankind' writes medical commentator Theodore Dalrymple in his recent book, An Intelligent Person's Guide to Medicine (14). Yet both are pervasive in modern society, and nowhere more than among patients with ME, above all in the ME organisations. To any observer who takes a historical or sociological perspective on the emergence of novel diseases such as CFS/ME, their origins in the existential distress of their sufferers is readily apparent - as indeed it usually is in the doctor's surgery.

The tragedy of the sufferers is their lack of insight into this process, a deficit that is reinforced by the provision of a pseudo-medical disease label.

https://web.archive.org/web/20030617152624/http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000002D3B6.htm

It was a couple of years before he was invited to take part in White's book/conference on biopsychosocial medicine: https://www.s4me.info/threads/peter...ated-approach-to-understanding-illness.16310/

 

[Three Chord Monty]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe a knighthood has already been bestowed in this category. Please, no duplicate entries.

On the other hand, this citation is certainly food for thought:


I just might be open to the argument that Sir Simon is the Art Garfunkel of his field.

View attachment 15173

Outside of the issue of one aspect of Art Garfunkel I have to believe few would argue with--that in spite of any/all issues/reputation, he is actually a major talent--I would say I'm VERY open to that argument. Unfortunately this was for some reason removed from YouTube by whoever uploaded it, but I could get it to play; but to link it here I did have to edit the URL. Copy it & replace where I typed DOT with actual .s

I know this is going off-topic but when I read how he invoked Garfunkel in praise of Wessely, remembering this, I just thought, how perfect. It screams Wessely-speak to me, all the more so because considering Garfunkel's vocal ability, there had to be something that led Paul Simon to go out on his own in the midst of great success. It does get a bit in the weeds as far as technical aspects of the recording process, but, hey, narcissism is a helluva...

https://web.archive.org/web/20190719063609/https://wwwDOTyoutubeDOTcom/watch?v=XkNSjyTCovM

 

[Dx Revision Watch]

how about the science media centre

SMC + Fiona Fox.

 

[Dx Revision Watch]

I couldn't find online the full version of the Fitzpatrcik column originally published on Spiked, and then edited for the Guardian, but it's archieve here, with extra bits like:



https://web.archive.org/web/20030617152624/http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000002D3B6.htm

It was a couple of years before he was invited to take part in White's book/conference on biopsychosocial medicine: https://www.s4me.info/threads/peter...ated-approach-to-understanding-illness.16310/

Thanks for digging that out Esther12; I looked yesterday for the original Spiked article that the Guardian piece was edited from but wasn't able to find it.

 

[Solstice]

I couldn't find online the full version of the Fitzpatrcik column originally published on Spiked, and then edited for the Guardian, but it's archieve here, with extra bits like:



https://web.archive.org/web/20030617152624/http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000002D3B6.htm

It was a couple of years before he was invited to take part in White's book/conference on biopsychosocial medicine: https://www.s4me.info/threads/peter...ated-approach-to-understanding-illness.16310/

Him talking about self-pity is pretty funny in the context of the article just posted.

 

[Parsnip]

Reads like propaganda to me.


Was not familiar with the guy.

Found a video of him, uploaded in 2014, sharing his opinion on how he thinks/thought the government overreacted to H1N1 swine-flu and created unnecessary anxiety in the population. Saying one thing we know from history is that worst case scenarios never happens. And that thinking it might be as bad as spanish flu was stupid, as that was an exceptionally bad thing.

Last question at 7:31 "H1N1 might not have been a mass-killing epidemic, but do you not accept there may be one some day and we should be prepared?" He says something like: Yes yes bad things happen, but don't say that to the public because they will get scared and overreact... and finishes his answer off with i think if the virologist just stayed in their lab and off the television screens we would all be better off.


It has one comment from last year: Wonder what he thinks about covid.




Edit: sorry if my post is off topic, i just found it ironic considering what Covid-19 has done to the world.

 

[Arnie Pye]

He says something like: Yes yes bad things happen, but don't say that to the public because they will get scared and overreact... and finishes his answer off with i think if the virologist just stayed in their lab and off the television screens we would all be better off.

Astonishingly condescending and arrogant.

 

[Ariel]

Thank you for that there is something really wrong with that guy just have a look at the following from your link:

He is trying to say that my is not a physical disease despite all the abnormalities because:
"On the other hand, there is also a long list of conditions that were once believed to have an organic cause but are now considered to have a psychosocial basis:...and, most notoriously, drapetomania (the inexplicable tendency of slaves in the American South to run away from their masters)." So according to him it is inexplicable that slaves want to have their freedom back.

Who reads this stuff and thinks, yeah, this guy seems pretty on the level?