Given the involvement of the ILO, the testing regime can be taken as having some validity and the health issues may well be non work environment related - that doesn't mean that the oppression that forces workers into accepting poor working/living conditions is acceptable and can be ignored because there is no chemical causation involved. If psychological oppression is the cause, then it is that which has to be challenged not ignored in favour of some endless search for an elusive toxin. Anyone who thinks that physiological responses such as fainting are not communicable should look at the 'infectivity' of yawning and vomiting, there are very good evolutionary reasons why such behaviour are communicable and humans remain social creatures subject to non cognitive 'involuntary' behaviours that have evolved over the last several million years. These behaviours may not be to the fore in the atomised societies of the developed world but amongst socially fractured, deprived and densley populated groups, survival behaviours do come to the fore and should be valued for what they are, and merely recast into what is meaningful to rich world conditions.
IVI
Except this explanation is not safe.
1. Fainting is a loss of consciousness. It has never been verified as being an 'evolutionary behaviour' or even a 'behaviour' as such (depending on the uncertainties in what constitutes 'behaviour'). Either way, notions of fainting as psychogenic rely mostly on the trivialising of female fainting (when there have been, and remain, good physical reasons that women can lose consciousness).
In contrast, it is known that loss of consciousness can occur due to heat exhaustion, lack of efficient blood flow to the brain, the inhalation of certain chemicals, or other injuries or insults to the brain.
2. Wessely and crew have taken the uncertainty of cause of these episodes to postulate a 'psychogenic by default' explanation, meaning: : "I don't know what it is so it must be a metaphysical condition: beliefs, lies, performances, delusions, the power of the mind to exert Carrie-like psychokinesis of the body to the nth degree". We are expected to believe in an occult process that is unexplained and undelineated (and confused in how it is conceptualised) on the basis of someone's say-so and appeal to authority. That these workers are NOT likely to have had a full investigation of the health and safety provisions (or lack of) is even more of a reason NOT to be claiming mass hysteria, especially as Wessely has not examined those people himself, and is therefore making a remote diagnosis (something doctors can get disciplined for- remember 'diagnosis by telly' Southall, for example?)
4. No work is actually done to help the so-called 'psychologically oppressed'. Note Wessely is NOT speaking out against conditions at the factory and calling for psychological support and improvement of pay and conditions. Indeed, he feeds into notions of 'weak in spirit' that accompany psychogenic explanations- certainly with regard to ME sufferers, and indeed this article has a lot of that construction going on. Hips' comment about health and safety being conveniently discarded by the mass hysteria explanation is highly apt. Even though RSI is taken very seriously by the Health and Safety Executive over here, for example, explaining it away as 'psychogenic' has allowed judges and others to discard the physical damage caused by RSI. We only recently have had Japanese authorities attempting to claim radiation sickness only affects the 'weak in spirit'!
5. Evolutionary psychology is another area where untenable claims are made as if they are truth. They often constitute 'just so' stories, and are quasi-religious, relying on faith. It is funny that 'the search for an elusive toxin' is deemed as not worth continuing, in favour of pursuing unverifiable, untenable beliefs in the metaphysical, especially the 'since the dawn of time' type explanations, which are, for the most part, and certainly with regard to fainting (!) REALLY unverifiable.
6. The usual sexist trivialising of female illness happens in this article. It is known in academic disciplines that women are traditionally misdiagnosed more with psychogenic illness. The assumption of psychogenic illness being more prevalent in women is not based on verifiable evidence, just prejudice. Wessely in particular has engaged in unsafe psychogenic explanations of women's illnesses over the years.
