Moved posts
A recent blog by Joanne Hunt on the site Healthcare Hubris
Media silence on the politics driving 'one of the biggest medical scandals of the 21st century'
See
https://www.healthcarehubris.com/po...QVd45WQ11l3aW6f8LuvljtSiM2b0T3dCK8YSuUfmMgXJQ
addresses the failure of the media, and the British press in particular, to objectively cover the issues relating chronic illness and ME/CFS in particular.
Though some general readers may dismiss this article as sensationalist I do feel that Joanne Hunt is getting better in her writings on these issues and less prone to let inaccuracies slip through by overgeneralisations.
For what it's worth, this is a post I've written about this in case of interest to anyone who mightn't have read it yet:
https://listserv.nodak.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=CO-CURE;bfa29c62.2304C&S=
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[The author has a number of peer-reviewed publications on this and related topics]
Media silence on the politics driving 'one of the biggest medical scandals of the 21st century' by Joanne Hunt
https://www.healthcarehubris.com/po...-biggest-medical-scandals-of-the-21st-century
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Tom comments: There are a few slightly "difficult" words in this but I think it should be understandable for people who, say, finished high school/secondary education or equivalent. My impression was it gets a bit easier to read as it goes along
https://www.healthcarehubris.com/po...-biggest-medical-scandals-of-the-21st-century
To give an idea of what are the practical implications of the philosophies of the people being complained about read, for example, "A Selection of points the Barts CF Service made during the NICE Guidelines for CFS / ME" and all the supports Peter White's service wanted to deny patients <
https://web.archive.org/web/2021081...g-the-nice-guidelines-for-cfs-me-tom-kindlon/ >
Another example is how people with connections to the disability insurance industry such as Peter White often recommend that patients not be given disability payments.
Peter White has also done work for the Department of Work and Pensions which could influence state benefits. Discussed here: "How payments from insurance companies might potentially bias proponents of CBT and/or GET for ME/CFS (such as the PACE Trial investigators)" <
https://www.s4me.info/threads/how-p...fs-such-as-the-pace-trial-investigators.8066/>
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Some extracts:
"The ever-growing elephant residing in newsrooms across the country (arguably, across much of the globe) is that the neglect of conditions such as ME/CFS – and increasingly long Covid - can be traced back to the interests of academic-clinicians (largely, UK psychiatrists), together with their associates in the income protection insurance industry and government, all of whom claim to work in the best interests of disabled people. Here, ‘best interests’ transpire to be depriving disabled people of a financial safety net through taking away state support, denying them basic social accommodations and appropriate biomedical care, whilst forcing them to undertake harmful psychosocial ‘rehabilitative’ healthcare interventions and exposing them to psycho-coercion masquerading as welfare-to-work policies."
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"In other words, by re-positioning a medical condition as ‘psychosocial’ (allegedly caused by a person’s maladaptive psychology, and therefore amenable to psychosocial ‘healthcare’), eligibility to long-term benefits and private income protection is precluded, and the state saves on medical care."
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"Whilst these agendas potentially impact all chronic illness, the target has historically been conditions that are clinically ‘contested’, since (oft politically induced) uncertainty creates a space where iniquitous political agendas are allowed to take centre stage. ME/CFS is perhaps the best example of this, a blueprint for the systematic social and epistemic marginalization of many other chronically ill and disabled patient groups under increasing austerity."
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"the PACE trial sought to prove that the researchers’ favoured interventions - cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and graded exercise therapy (GET) - were effective in ‘treating’ ME/CFS. ‘Sought to prove’ seems a fair representation; beyond numerous design problematics and the clear political agenda (get people off benefits, preclude income protection pay-outs and push people back into work), methodological jiggery pokery ensued when it became clear that the results were not going to meet researchers’ expectations."