Dead but it won’t lie down: The myth that ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) = MUS (Medically Unexplained Symptoms).

This is what I mean by having to distort evidence and invoke some strange new concept of disease. No one had any problem with polio being the result of the epidemic it was part of even though it was a long term issue. When there was a measles epidemic and children were left deaf or blind no one felt the need to say it needed a strange new psychological explanation. If many people who went through an epidemic became ill and stayed ill it was associated with that infection.

The concept of mind body dualism, emotions being expressed through bodily disorders and all their other statements are only given any credence because they have asserted them for years and because people, including doctors, have lost the old knowledge of infections. The BPS brigade just shout the loudest and cover their ears.

Even talking about there being an original disease which then becomes psychological is only possible to do with a straight face because they have asserted it for so long. On which day did the symptoms stop being physical and start being psychological when the nature of them has been unchanged for decades?

That is why they keep insisting we are all deconditioned. According to them to have ME/CFS is to be deconditioned so one person who is fit gives the lie to their theories. They have therefore been very careful not to look for it over the years. They make up explanations which are vaguely plausible to sneak their theories past any critical thinking. Without their lies and distortions there would be no debate.

 

Sadly, that about sums it up, though its more soft whispering in the right ears.

 

I know that I am out of step and that my views are not generally popular, but there can be little doubt that this idea for psychological perpetuation of disease may have originated with, and was certainly pushed hard by, doctors with a very sound knowledge of disease and its causation, in part because they were involved in a process for the deliberate causation of disease. They also may be responsible for the love of the questionnaire with the use of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality test and the various tweeks by Canter to other meaningless tests.

It may be that some of those who later cited this research without question were unaware of its origins.

 

Fraud and Charcot started this, in the nineteenth century. Knowledge of disease was minimal. By the early to mid twentieth century it was well established. I am unsure at what point it was first taught in medical schools, maybe someone can tell us, but after that all doctors were exposed to the concept.

These ideas function primarily, from my perspective, as a too hard basket for medicine. Almost without exception they are diseases for which diagnosis is difficult and so is treatment. Doctors have issues with patients they cannot diagnose or treat.

For example, about the time of WW1 some psychiatrists were having patient colons or teeth removed to treat psychiatric disorders. That is how little they knew of bacteria.

Once a disease is diagnosed as psychiatric its easy to send patients to them, where their unproven theories and treatments at least give an illusion to some that something is being done to help. Psychiatry has some partial successes, MUS, MUPS, hysteria, conversion disorder etc. are not numbered among them.

 

Obviously I am aware of their contributions to the debate, but the point I make is that it was the follow up on proven acute infectious disease with the suggestion that its chronic perpetuation was due to psychiatric vulnerability of the patient that dates to 1959.

 

This is interesting and I had not thought about it that way. Being stuck here with little to do but read, it is fascinating how much was going behind closed doors in the post war period, things that are not really in the public consciousness even today. Things like the MKultra programme were they did things like leaving LSD laced cookies in the CIA break rooms to see what would happen.

The rumour that eating carrots helped with the eyesight of pilots was used to cover up the use of radar during the second world war so insisting that strange diseases were psychological may well have been a way of covering up germ warfare. We know they released infections to trace the spread and infected prisoners.

One of the strange things about getting old is you discover that the things which were condemned as conspiracy theories or wild speculation are confirmed as true 30 years later when secret documents are released.

 

@Mithriel

I think your examples of polio and measles being understood as the physical cause of ongoing disability are excellent.

This versus the BPS ME nonsense of first a virus which clears up, leaving a psychological condition to perpetuate the physical disability.

There are other infections that cause long-term disability.

One such infection is:
"Excess mortality and long-term disability from healthcare-associated staphylococcus aureus infections: a population-based matched cohort study.":
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23940689


Another is:
"Long-term neuromuscular outcomes of west nile virus infection: A clinical and electromyographic evaluation of patients with a history of infection.":
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28380696

 

Nice Fraudian slip

 

It would be, if it were.

 

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to comment.