Over the past few years I've successfully raised awareness of the issue of M.E activists' abuse of doctors and patients.
I've
highlighted specific examples of the targeted demonisation of M.E
patients such as the lawyer branded branded "sick and crazy" and the
researchers who are on the receiving end of a slew of ignorant, vicious,
personal attacks.
I've explained how many of the most well-known
UK and international M.E charities, groups, researchers, activists and
journalists are fully aware of this problem. Eg: Founder of M.E
Action: "The problem isn't the NIH it's vicious attacks from patients".
Often
our morality and humanity require us to make difficult sacrifices in
order to maintain our personal integrity and honour. This is not the
case within M.E. The solution to the M.E problem is distributed between
doctors and patients. Where patients abuse doctors, or allow others to
drive a wedge into the doctor - patient relationship, M.E patients will
remain abed indefinitely.
Likewise where M.E patients heap abuse
and pain and misery onto their fellow patients, they bolster and
actively serve the wider social stigma: a set of damaging, hateful and
ignorant preconceptions that harm all M.E patients, including those who
bully others.
I think, M.E patients who attack researchers and others patients are unsaveable.
I
hope that people with M.E change. I hope they stand with their friends
and with their colleagues during those moments when they are targeted for abuse. I hope they will resist the simplistic and self-serving
attempts at rabble-rousing. I hope they will see through their leaders'
disguises. I hope they will stop attacking those who are trying to help them.
I strongly suspect, however, that they won't.
I
am not writing a million words for M.E patients for my own benefit. I
want M.E patients out of my life. After 35 years of horrible illness, I want to enjoy my recovery. I do the work out here of love, duty and an extreme sense of
pity.
By the time M.E patients see where their activists have led them, the
trap will have closed. :(
Perhaps at that moment more will listen. Perhaps at that moment more will be able to use the words written here in order to avoid The Editor's Pen.
