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Min wrote re Action for ME (AFME):
"..their collusion in the PACE trial, their promotion of GET and CBT, their willingness to work with the Wessely school of psychiatry, their refusal to offer full membership and voting rights to any but their executive, their advertising of the Lightning Process and their enornous salaries compared to the tiny amount they spend on research."
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The last time AFME were asked how many members it had (charity members, not FB members) - AFME said 6 and a half thousand. That is, 6 1/2 thousand members and £500,000 on staff salaries. AFME has lost thousands of members in the last decade.
Action for ME has lost a lot of members; people who have left the charity in frustration or disgust due to the reasons Min listed, and due to AFME's sit on the fence attitude, its adherance to the fatigue clinics, and its tendency to do smokescreen publicity, like today on the Wright show.
AFME could have lobbied for the CCC at any time in the last decade but did not; instead, it's still promoting the fatigue clinics and a broadbased, fatigue based diagnostic process, giving the Lightning Process and other NLP 'cures' advertising space in the charity magazine (which AFME takes money for).
AFME last year engaged 'an ME Ambassador' who says she recovered with Micked therapy. MIcked is an NLP training with psychotherapy (except the Micked therapists have never actually trained in psychotherapy, but that doesn't stop them).
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The decades are passing, but AFME is still stuck in the dark ages, still showing a publicity veneer of claiming to represent ME, but still condoning CBT/GET, the clinics, and NLP psychobabble..
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AFME charity staff come and go, they stay a few short years and then move on to other jobs. AFME staff are not experts, not even as informed as a great many patients are.
But we are stuck with their construction of ME and their wishy washy 'ME is anything anyone says it is' and can be 'cured' by psychotherapy etc.
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