Photos of Healthy People Rubbing Eyes in Current News Articles - Give Feedback

[Athene]

QUOTE
ME is no more an "invisible disease" than cancer or MS or the 'flu. "Invisible illness" is just a get-out clause for any bigot to excuse their behaviour and I wish people wouldn't keep furthering that myth

IamME, what visible, physical manifestations of ME do you have?
Apart from nystagmus, thin hair and lots of bruises, I look like healthy people. There is nothing in the Canadian criteria which defines CFS by any visible, physical alterations. Sorry, but I have to correct you , it IS an invisible disease.

And using stock photos with models is standard journalistic practise in articles about anything from rape or economic disaster to tourism and a wide range of diseases. In the UK, every time they ran an article about mad cow disease, they would put up a picture of dairy cattle which were not relevant to beef production, and the articles about genetic modification always showed a tomato, which is not a genetically modified crop. We are not being singled out.

 

[VillageLife]

Yep I really dont like the pictures of people trying hard to look tierd.

but not sure about the mice either. I thought last week the media would name this the ME virus,,,seems they have gone for the mouse virus as the headliner!....and plenty of mouse pics.

 

[IamME]

IamME, what visible, physical manifestations of ME do you have?
Apart from nystagmus, thin hair and lots of bruises, I look like healthy people.

In other words, you look no different from most people with a brain tumour, stomach cancer, multiple sclerosis, or many other so-called "invisible" illnesses.

That's my point, there is no need to perpetuate a harmful, artificial dichotomy between ME and "other diseases". The vast majority of people in an average doctor's waiting room look okay.

What sitgmata do you look for to tell if someone in the street has MS or not? There are none. They may be falling over or in a wheelchair -- so can pwME.

There is nothing in the Canadian criteria which defines CFS by any visible, physical alterations. Sorry, but I have to correct you , it IS an invisible disease.

The CCD is good but not perfect. It doesn't mention the cogwheel motion of raised leg movement, for example, which could be seen as an equivalent of Babinkski's reflex. And of course there's crimson crescents (which I think do get a mention buried somewhere in it).
Sorry that I have to counter-correct you.

And using stock photos with models is standard journalistic practise in articles about anything from rape or economic disaster to tourism and a wide range of diseases.

Which is no excuse for doing it badly. I didn't say anything about banning stock images.

You completely miss my point that if given a choice between an illustration that says nothing, or worse, misleads (pwME are just tired or sleepy! ME is like narcoplepsy! pwME need a stimulant! etc), and one that adds something or helps inform people, it's better to choose the latter option.

 

[IamME]

I am not going to argue any more on this, I'll just say this.

How many more times do you want to be associated with people who are just a bit tired, or a totally different disease such as a primary sleep disorder (eg Narcolepsy), or be defined by "fatigue" in general? The CCD was good in that it helped steer defintion away from the very harmful obsession with "fatigue" which ME was never about until the CDC decided they were going to make an outbreak disappear, although it would do better to get rid of its redundant fatigue criteria padding at all. I've seen media comparisons of ME with MS where ME is just about sleepiness or tiredness whereas MS is about being in a wheelchair -- even though not everyone with MS is.

The ideal picture would be of a virus or a lab (if that's the subject of the article) and if not, of a severely affected sufferer, which means a wheelchair or someone who isn't just in bed but looks sick in bed (like Ms Gilderdale). Everyone benefits from getting the message about severity out there, whereas at the moment, no-one benefits from glamorous pictures of models "acting tired" in stereotype work settings.

If Joe Public is bigoted and moronic enough to think that only the Great Purple Buboes are real, he needs to have his prejudices shown up and thrown back in his face. Ask him why we need doctors if it's so easy to diagnose disease, ask him how he can tell who has a brain tumour or mito disease or heart failure etc just by looking at them. By saying oh yeah, er, there's these invisible diseases, you're giving Joe Moron a perfect get out cause and rationalising his prejudices rather than fundamentally challenging his thinking. The so-called invisible illness advocacy has achieved a big fat nothing. People don't attack ME because it's different, they attack it because they're mislead into prejudice and ignorance.

ME has several "visible" physical manifestations: myclonus, fasciculations, ataxia, vocal changes, bowel distension and "boiling bowel", orthostatic intolerance, dyspnea/orthopnea, sleep paralysis, etc.

 

[Athene]

Hi IamME,
I get your point, well made. You have made a good list of physical manifestation which prove me wrong! But in my defence, I do still think these would be hard to show in a photo.
I think showing the severely ill people in wheelchairs would be a good idea, and I do remember one article which showed a photo of this type, it was one of the press articles about H2S when that was news.
Whe I said ME is invisible, I didn't mean to contrast it with MS, cancer etc. These are also often invisible diseases. In fact the majority of diseases are invisible in photos, in the sense that they are not skin diseases and do not cause deformity. In fact, when people irritatingly tell me I look well, I normally point out that CFS is not a skin disease, so what external signs were they actually expecting to see?

 

[acer2000]

I yawn all the time, it seems appropriate. I thought that picture in the linked story was a great photo. How else are you going to represent the disorder? Show a picture of a normal looking person just sitting there? Yeah, that will have a lot of impact.

You realize also that by badgering reporters and news outlets to complain about, of all things, the picture they're using, you're not doing anyone any favors, right? Anything much other than writing to tell them what a great job they're doing in even covering the story is probably doing more harm than good.

I agree.

PANDORA, CAA, WPI or somebody should have stock photos of patients available for download by the media. If no photos are available, how can they use them? They should also have pictures of the virus, etc.

The poor graphic designer is just trying to find the closest thing to go with the article, and there's always a deadline, so they go to a stock photo service - which, of course, doesn't have any suitable photos.

Or we could stock up the stock photo services, or we could make photos available on Wikimedia Commons.

This would be a very good idea.

 

[urbantravels]

Stock photo alert! Here's a different approach. Those Russians, so dramatic.

http://kp.ua/online/news/241869/

If you run the story through Google Translate, nothing new, just a report on the Alter paper, probably a partly-digested retread of one of the wire service stories or the CNN story. The photo caption says "Chronic fatigue syndrome is a virus" and the headline says "Fatigue can be infected."

 

[Gemini]

Stock photo alert! Here's a different approach. Those Russians, so dramatic.

urbantravels,

That photo is more like it!!!

Great post. Like the "Fatigue can be infected" headline, too!

Gemini

 

[urbantravels]

He doesn't suggest "chronically fatigued" to me so much as "shot in the head while shopping," but there's no blood, so OK. I guess Russians just have a flair for making an invisible disability visible.

 

[pictureofhealth]

Ha ha brilliant!

Shattered from ME after a recent shopping trip? Or did he just spot the total on his VISA card after his wife's shopping trip?

In any case, its much more realistic.

 

[Athene]

That's a fab photo! By someone who really has imagination... and can also put a proper "hook" in the headline.

 

[Gemini]

That's a fab photo! By someone who really has imagination... and can also put a proper "hook" in the headline.

Would be a great poster image for PEM--post exertion malaise!

Gemini

 

[pictureofhealth]

On 2nd thoughts it might be better without all the bags. It might give the impression that ME patients are spending all their time shopping & having fun - aarrgh. Its so tricky to hit just the right note with this, isn't it?!

 

[leaves]

Great idea! Maybe we could provide them with some good pics !!

 

[Gemini]

On 2nd thoughts it might be better without all the bags. It might give the impression that ME patients are spending all their time shopping & having fun - aarrgh. Its so tricky to hit just the right note with this, isn't it?!

Perhaps bags of food, essentials for survival?

You're right, it's a challenge!