Annikki
Senior Member
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Note: there has a been a correction to this article. Michael Sharpe of the Wessely school worked for UNUM. Simon Wessely does not; he works or worked for another insurance multinational called PRISMA. I don't know if Wessely is still currently in their employ.
I think the basis for Wessely's media campaign has its roots in deeper soil than just Wessely's commitment to an ideology. Remember, this is about money more than genuine medical debate. Wessely and his peers at Kings College are awash in disability insurance money.
Michael Sharpe, member of the Wessely school, is/was involved with the multinational disability insurance company UNUM. (Sorry; the article I'm looking at is dated for 2002. I don't have current information) UNUM has much to gain by having us all reclassified as crackpots. So does PRISMA I imagine. The odd thing is that when looking at facts about the class action lawsuit which was made against UNUM or UNUM Provident as it used to be called, I see UNUM customers go through the same sort of attacks on the legitimacy of their symptoms. The goal of UNUM seems to be reducing the number of people it has to cover. Other authors have attributed Wessely school corporate ties to disability insurance corporations as motivating their psychiatric relabeling of ME/CFS.
The benefit to the disability insurance companies involved would be reducing the number of people eligible for disability insurance. The documented activities of UNUM in regard to its customers would support that hypothesis. UNUM was also investigated for encouraging its customers in the U.S. to apply for Social Security Disability. It is illegal in the U.S. for a private disability insurance company to encourage customers to apply for government benefits. Such activities indicate UNUM doesn't want to have to pay to fully cover its customers. A shift in the official labeling of neurological disorders to psychiatric may help with such a goal. Psychiatric disorders can be "treated" and the person sent back to work. Someone with a neurological condition would not likely be expected to return to work due to genuine physical limitation.
All these facts you already know. What you may not know is what I'm going to share here. Thankfully I'm very familiar with public relations tactics. At the end of this article I'll share some great links to which share more about these topics.
We complain about how many media outlets give Wessely a chance to spew lies and rightfully so. It seems this August he has been on overdrive. Why should the Wessely school be so active in advocating for their agenda over using CBT in place of medicine for CFS/ME this month?
In the business world, when corporate misconduct happens, the guilty business will use the media to paint (or twist) reality in a light which make it looks good. For example, after BP spills a lot of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and then it makes a bunch of commercials showing BP workers helping families in New Orleans. It will do this while it is also appealing the US government to allow it to stop paying to assist those families. Using media is one way that opinions can be forged to benefit a company, even in the face of evidence to contrary. Look up the term "greenwashing" for a start.
One thing I always keep in mind when looking at Wessely is that he is a corporate officer at PRISMAand his colleague Michael Sharpe works for UNUM. In dismantling his arguments I'm going to not just look at medical research, but assume there are profit motivations involved too. Both UNUM and PRISMA stand to gain through taking ME off the list of recognized neurological disorders.
Maybe there is a "secondary gain" for the Wessely school in writing now so much about CBT. You could maybe see this as a strategy taken to further their aims in the face of progress made in research on CFS/ME.
This would not just include XMRV research but research by Dr. Light. My thoughts are that Wessely is writing to ensure that opinions regress even in the face of this progress.
Right now Wessely is trying to play the "victim." So Wessely has had threats made at him. No celebrity is exempt from this sort of thing, from rock stars to actors. You don't need to be busy forcing ME patients to exercise to get strange stuff like this. He should be lucky that the majority of us appreciate what suffering is and have a better mind than wish it with no regard.
At least that is the way I feel. For me, suffering makes me appreciate kindness. Even at my angriest, I don't find myself wishing for more death and misery- even on those who've caused it for me or the people I care about. Surely people have a right to feel afraid of Wessely and to wish themselves to not be hurt by his work. Maybe some people don't know the right way to get free from the abuse his work has led to. Fear tends to make us say things we don't otherwise. Still, people in the public eye get threats and stalkers and more. It would be naive for Wessely to take it so personally. In a way, that he fears these threats being carried out is an admission he thinks someone would have the motivation to actually carry out violence.
The real issue I see here I think is Wessely is using these threats to convey himself as a victim and make us seem like the perpetrators. It also incidentally gives him a reason to write when there is no good reason for him to pick up a pen (like there ever is).
I've been thinking hard about why these articles are coming out now. I wonder if it is because major strides in ME and neurological disease research are being made. Wessely and his fellow Wessely school members like Michael Sharpe, who has ties to UNUM must be very unhappy about this.
Therefore, I thought it would be worth taking a good look at UNUM and look at their history in using public relations, media and lobbying. I wanted to know the way this company handles things, what PR firms and lobbying firms they use and maybe also see if they have ties to media companies as well. I'll share what I've found so far.
Thanks to website called Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting I learned UNUM shares members of its board of directors with the board of directors of ABC/Disney.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2870
Most media scholars consider connections like these as anathemas to getting out alternative points of view, like say the idea that ME is a recognized medical condition by the WHO, into the mass media.
From what I read about UNUM, I consistently see bold, negative strategies taken to assist it in bilking customers. There were so many complaints against UNUM, a class action lawsuit was launched against them. I can't believe what I found on the website for the lawyers who fought for patients against UNUM about the lawsuit and how UNUM handled it:
http://unumprovidentclassaction.net/
I also did some reading on the Consumer Affairs website about the UNUM class action lawsuit. On this website are very many UNUM customer horror stories. What I keep thinking when reading those stories from UNUM policy holders is how "the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree." Calling patient's crazy, and denying physical symptoms aren't just reserved for ME/CFS patients- this is treatment UNUM policy holders receive too.
.
I really start thinking of that fruit and tree proverb when reading this story about a woman with a back and neck injury being forced to lift and do things she physically couldn't by a physical therapist appointed by UNUM: (link: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/insurance/unum.html )
Here is another UNUM horror story which mirror our own horror stories:
If this weren't enough, UNUM was also found guilty of unlawfully trying to force its clients to apply for government disability insurance in the United States:
Unum found guilty of social security disability fraud by a federal jury
I highly recommend the ME/CFS community getting educated about public relations, media and keeping tabs on corporations because I feel this is going to be very relevant to advocacy work at this stage of the game.
Here are some of my favorite websites: :sofa:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Portal:Global_Corporations
http://prwatch.org
http://corpwatch.org/
http://www.commondreams.org/
I think the basis for Wessely's media campaign has its roots in deeper soil than just Wessely's commitment to an ideology. Remember, this is about money more than genuine medical debate. Wessely and his peers at Kings College are awash in disability insurance money.
Michael Sharpe, member of the Wessely school, is/was involved with the multinational disability insurance company UNUM. (Sorry; the article I'm looking at is dated for 2002. I don't have current information) UNUM has much to gain by having us all reclassified as crackpots. So does PRISMA I imagine. The odd thing is that when looking at facts about the class action lawsuit which was made against UNUM or UNUM Provident as it used to be called, I see UNUM customers go through the same sort of attacks on the legitimacy of their symptoms. The goal of UNUM seems to be reducing the number of people it has to cover. Other authors have attributed Wessely school corporate ties to disability insurance corporations as motivating their psychiatric relabeling of ME/CFS.
The benefit to the disability insurance companies involved would be reducing the number of people eligible for disability insurance. The documented activities of UNUM in regard to its customers would support that hypothesis. UNUM was also investigated for encouraging its customers in the U.S. to apply for Social Security Disability. It is illegal in the U.S. for a private disability insurance company to encourage customers to apply for government benefits. Such activities indicate UNUM doesn't want to have to pay to fully cover its customers. A shift in the official labeling of neurological disorders to psychiatric may help with such a goal. Psychiatric disorders can be "treated" and the person sent back to work. Someone with a neurological condition would not likely be expected to return to work due to genuine physical limitation.
All these facts you already know. What you may not know is what I'm going to share here. Thankfully I'm very familiar with public relations tactics. At the end of this article I'll share some great links to which share more about these topics.
We complain about how many media outlets give Wessely a chance to spew lies and rightfully so. It seems this August he has been on overdrive. Why should the Wessely school be so active in advocating for their agenda over using CBT in place of medicine for CFS/ME this month?
In the business world, when corporate misconduct happens, the guilty business will use the media to paint (or twist) reality in a light which make it looks good. For example, after BP spills a lot of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and then it makes a bunch of commercials showing BP workers helping families in New Orleans. It will do this while it is also appealing the US government to allow it to stop paying to assist those families. Using media is one way that opinions can be forged to benefit a company, even in the face of evidence to contrary. Look up the term "greenwashing" for a start.
One thing I always keep in mind when looking at Wessely is that he is a corporate officer at PRISMAand his colleague Michael Sharpe works for UNUM. In dismantling his arguments I'm going to not just look at medical research, but assume there are profit motivations involved too. Both UNUM and PRISMA stand to gain through taking ME off the list of recognized neurological disorders.
Maybe there is a "secondary gain" for the Wessely school in writing now so much about CBT. You could maybe see this as a strategy taken to further their aims in the face of progress made in research on CFS/ME.
This would not just include XMRV research but research by Dr. Light. My thoughts are that Wessely is writing to ensure that opinions regress even in the face of this progress.
Right now Wessely is trying to play the "victim." So Wessely has had threats made at him. No celebrity is exempt from this sort of thing, from rock stars to actors. You don't need to be busy forcing ME patients to exercise to get strange stuff like this. He should be lucky that the majority of us appreciate what suffering is and have a better mind than wish it with no regard.
At least that is the way I feel. For me, suffering makes me appreciate kindness. Even at my angriest, I don't find myself wishing for more death and misery- even on those who've caused it for me or the people I care about. Surely people have a right to feel afraid of Wessely and to wish themselves to not be hurt by his work. Maybe some people don't know the right way to get free from the abuse his work has led to. Fear tends to make us say things we don't otherwise. Still, people in the public eye get threats and stalkers and more. It would be naive for Wessely to take it so personally. In a way, that he fears these threats being carried out is an admission he thinks someone would have the motivation to actually carry out violence.
The real issue I see here I think is Wessely is using these threats to convey himself as a victim and make us seem like the perpetrators. It also incidentally gives him a reason to write when there is no good reason for him to pick up a pen (like there ever is).
I've been thinking hard about why these articles are coming out now. I wonder if it is because major strides in ME and neurological disease research are being made. Wessely and his fellow Wessely school members like Michael Sharpe, who has ties to UNUM must be very unhappy about this.
Therefore, I thought it would be worth taking a good look at UNUM and look at their history in using public relations, media and lobbying. I wanted to know the way this company handles things, what PR firms and lobbying firms they use and maybe also see if they have ties to media companies as well. I'll share what I've found so far.
Thanks to website called Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting I learned UNUM shares members of its board of directors with the board of directors of ABC/Disney.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2870
Most media scholars consider connections like these as anathemas to getting out alternative points of view, like say the idea that ME is a recognized medical condition by the WHO, into the mass media.
From what I read about UNUM, I consistently see bold, negative strategies taken to assist it in bilking customers. There were so many complaints against UNUM, a class action lawsuit was launched against them. I can't believe what I found on the website for the lawyers who fought for patients against UNUM about the lawsuit and how UNUM handled it:
http://unumprovidentclassaction.net/
I also did some reading on the Consumer Affairs website about the UNUM class action lawsuit. On this website are very many UNUM customer horror stories. What I keep thinking when reading those stories from UNUM policy holders is how "the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree." Calling patient's crazy, and denying physical symptoms aren't just reserved for ME/CFS patients- this is treatment UNUM policy holders receive too.
. I really start thinking of that fruit and tree proverb when reading this story about a woman with a back and neck injury being forced to lift and do things she physically couldn't by a physical therapist appointed by UNUM: (link: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/insurance/unum.html )
Here is another UNUM horror story which mirror our own horror stories:
If this weren't enough, UNUM was also found guilty of unlawfully trying to force its clients to apply for government disability insurance in the United States:
Unum found guilty of social security disability fraud by a federal jury
I highly recommend the ME/CFS community getting educated about public relations, media and keeping tabs on corporations because I feel this is going to be very relevant to advocacy work at this stage of the game.
Here are some of my favorite websites: :sofa:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Portal:Global_Corporations
http://prwatch.org
http://corpwatch.org/
http://www.commondreams.org/
