I'm going through everything I've produced for M.E patients over the past few decades.
In front of me I've got the founder of a national M.E charity trying to explain in writing why they're not a "traitor"!! Their word. Seriously.
That's pretty darn creepy right there.
To be clear: I didn't call this person a traitor, they volunteered the word of their own accord.
But what's really, really, creepy is the fact that as M.E research and activism implodes, M.E patients just sit there, unmoved by it all. They kinda ghost in and out of reality at will.
Instead of this: "James! WTF?! Which charity is this?! Why did the founder of a charity wonder if they were a traitor?", I get this eerie, ghostly, silence. Why?
Well. Patients want it all to be medicine's fault. All the suffering. All the mistreatment.
And this is wrong. Absolutely wrong.
I went to medicine. As an M.E patient advocate; I spoke one to one with the then President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. We talked for hours one Friday night. The conversation was stimulating, educational and honest.
Everything that M.E patient activism lacks, in fact.
People resort to abuse, stonewalling, or don't even try to behave with civility when
they are trying to force falsehoods through into the public
consciousness.
M.E activism is toxic. Avoid it.
And as to the charity mentioned above: This charity knowingly left M.E patients to suffer threats, abuse and isolation for years. I personally was sent back to severe M.E without a support network. This charity should, with honour and grace, end all of its operations and shut its doors for good.
