Today, the IOM published the
provisional IOM committee appointments for the institution’s ME/CFS “study.” I have only taken a brief look at the list of nominees. Others are in the process of “vetting” the nominees and researching their background. I thought about this long and hard and have come to the conclusion that providing input on the committee members will accomplish little and likely legitimize this rigged game. The fact that the number of nominees who are not experts in the disease (8) exceeds the number of experts (7) quite clearly exposes HHS’s intent in burying our patient population for good with an unscientific definition that will set us back for decades and in producing a result like the IOM delivered in the case of Gulf War Illness....
Most of the appointments are completely outrageous and yet some patients are almost relieved because it “could have been worse,” because we all expected the government to stack the deck against us with non-experts. Are we so used to being treated as sub-humans that we rejoice over any crumbs that are being thrown to us, no matter how rotten they are? This reminds me of the ludicrousy of the East German government’s propaganda. Everybody was expecting it and we all figured that there was nothing we could do about it anyway.
Well, we can do something about this and that is unconditional resistance. Let’s not lend credibility to this kangaroo court by deluding ourselves into thinking that we have influence over the outcome of the IOM “study” by giving input on the appointees. The only way we will survive this rigged game is by continuing to demand the cancellation of the IOM contract altogether. Compromising means surrendering.
