Wow. These revelations about the longtime political group that actively worked to spread both the "It's all in your head!" story about M.E. and the "M.E. patients are abusing scientists for telling the truth!" story (both proven to be false) are enraging and also really important.
This story is one of the most disturbing I've ever covered. It's about how the views of a deeply weird ideological sect affected science, medicine and the media, with devastating impacts on patients. Please read and pass on. This horror has to stop. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Chronic fatigue syndrome is as physiological as a broken leg. We must learn all we can from this tragic case, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
Okay I was _really_ not expecting Bob Avakian and the RCP cult to figure into this story.
I'm glad you said "both proven to be false". The alleged abuse of psychologists and psychiatrists is, arguably, a smear campaign designed to silence critics of their methods and to make the topic of post/persistent infection illness so toxic that nobody will touch it.
It is so upsetting to be a scientist or patient criticising this kind of abusive, paternalistic, controlling institutional behaviour. There are a lot of ppl who are frankly deserving of compensation.
In the US, chronic fatigue sufferers were simply labelled "lazy".
That pisses me off more in a way because there was medical establishment behind that and the Guardian defended and continues to defend them
Yeeeeeesh. :(
That same political group became Boris Johnson's staffers, notably Domenic Cummings
