Mark this day in your calendar. We could be observing the beginning of the end of a decades-long medical scandal.
In the UK, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) have published
new draft guidelines for the management of “myalgic encephalomyelitis (or encephalopathy)/chronic fatigue syndrome”.
These are very significant and mark a potential — and heretofore unforeseeable – triumph for empirical science over clinical folklore.
* * *
I have written
extensively on this blog about the destructive impact of
eminence-based medicine on the lives of people with ME. The issue has a very long history and has many twists and turns.
In short, while it is increasingly beyond doubt that
ME is an inherently physiological illness, in some countries — especially Britain — the field of ME care has
long been in the sway of psychological and behavioural therapists. These folks, some of whom are high-profile academics of considerable eminence, have simply insisted that ME is propelled by
psychological factors, if not caused by them. Such victim-blaming is clearly
rooted in historical misogyny, and flies in the face both of empirical evidence and of
widely shared scientific consensus.
As a consequence, patients in the UK have long been told that they are effectively
causing their own symptoms through faulty reasoning and counterproductive behaviour. I have described this as nothing less than
twenty years of institutional gaslighting.
Patients today continue to face widespread
physician scepticism, frequent
accusations of malingering, and
defamatory ridicule in the media.
