"""This characterisation of ME personality and lifestyle is also apparent in the theory that ME is an effect of hyperventilation, or overbreathing. In this version of the 'yuppie flu' construction, sympathy for the sufferer morphs into contempt. The theory, based on the claim that a change in breathing lowers the level of carbon dioxide in the blood, inducing malfunction in muscles and other organs, was publicised in an article on the front page of the Sunday Times (Hodgkinson, 1988); the title, predictably maddening to sufferers, was ' ‘Yuppie flu’ is all in the mind, say doctors'. The doctors concerned were cardiologists Peter Nixon and Stuart Rosen, who expounded their views in the same issue of the Sunday Times, and whose proposed method of treatment was a period of sleep induced by heavy sedation, followed by breathing retraining.
The notion that the symptoms of ME result from hyperventilation produced by anxiety originates in the writings of McEvedy and Beard (1970b: 13). The essentials of this new version of an old idea emerge from the press report just mentioned. 'All the (ME patients) we have seen here,' explains Rosen, 'have four-star abilities with five-star ambitions. They have above-average intelligence, high levels of drive, lots of enthusiasm; but they are not quite the superman or superwoman they need to be to achieve their ambition.' A severe viral infection, he believes, can trigger the health crisis, but it is not the root cause. With the disregard for logic and coherence that characterises so many pronouncements about ME, Rosen adds that his patients have ranged from an old lady whose illness began when she was pushed out of a bus queue, to a woman who survived torture in a South American prison, but became ill when she learned that her daughter had married a fascist. How either of these cases fits the specification of five-star ambitions hampered by four-star abilities is not clear.
Rosen's colleague, Peter Nixon, adds more soberly that 'overbreathing is a symptom of fear or panic, that can be experienced when people who demand a lot of themselves are falling short in their achievements'. A subsequent paper in the medical press, of which Rosen and Nixon are amongst the co-authors, draws analogies between alleged stages of ME and those of battle-weariness, and speculates as to whether hyperventilation due to anxiety and effort may be the natural penalty for violating the boundaries of physiological tolerance (Rosen et al. 1990: 763-764).
In a later television interview, Hodgkinson (Frontline, Channel 4, 25 July,1993) defended his use of the term 'yuppie flu' in his Sunday Times report. He explained that yuppies in the 1980s went all out for material success, becoming ill when their goals were frustrated; they had 'one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the brake', and suffered a crisis leading to deep exhaustion and despair. As suggested above, there is an implication, albeit unstated, that ME sufferers are unpleasant, pushy people, who have got their just deserts. The preponderance of female sufferers appears to be forgotten here: it is not plausible that most of the high-powered people to whom Hodgkinson refers were women. ""
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