Thank, Knackered. I thought he was genuinely curious! I feel kind of bad about taking him at his word.
Everytime I read a little write up about how easy it is to treat ME/CFS I feel really wistful, I wish so badly that stuff actually worked.
I read some more of his posts and Bad Science, especially the ones regarding Ean Proctor. I don't know what really happened with Ean. MJ rejects Ean's own words in favor of an article citing a medical investigation in a "peer reviewed" paper. It's
here if anyone wants to read it.
Allegations against the Proctors were that they providing inadequate care for their child. Apparently the basis was that he lost weight and was sick. Again, I don't know what happened but I know from my own experience that appetite loss and weight loss are symptoms, I lost 8 pounds in two weeks last summer. It's very conceivable that the evidence of "abuse" were just symptoms of illness. Severe cases aren't as common as mild ones and it's possible that the medical staff weren't familiar with how badly the illness can affect the body. The Proctors
were seeking medical care and trying to help their child. If they were abusing him, wouldn't they want to hide it?
There are disparate accounts of the swimming pool incident, the feeding, the amusement park ride, between what Ean says what is in the report. MJ gives weight to the report, over Eans' account:
What I said was that somebody who has been through such a traumatic childhood with - whichever story you accept - a history of abuse - is not necessarily a particularly reliable witness years later. I don't think that's a particularly controversial or unfair statement to make. How much can you genuinely recall of how you were being cared for as a ten year old? <snip> Getting reliable testimony from victims of child abuse is an extremely difficult task that relies in expert interrogators - it is a job which a documentary crew simply do not have the skillset for, and nobody should be accepting an interview on the telly as serious evidence in a case of child abuse.
Given the choice between accepting an official account that was compiled from medical notes and expert witnesses kept at several different, independent institutions, or accepting an account propagated on the internet that has no reliable evidence to back it up, and ignores vast swathes of the child's medical history...
I don't think we have this report online, do we? Just the synopsis?
But, it's not inconceivable that the accounts in the report aren't entirely honest.
Here's an example of a physician being told to lie about a wrongful death in litigation proceedings; here's an example of police
blatantly lying about the existence of evidence. (There's a lot more of these but I think two makes my point.)
It's not implausible or impossible that Ean's account is the truth.
