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*O* What is it About Psychiatry? By Gurli Bagnall, 12 July 2005.
"[Psychiatry] is a field where fads and fancies flourish. Hardly a year passes without some new claim, [But]The early promises of each of these discoveries are uniformly unfulfilled." (US) Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Mental Health, 1961
What is it was about the medical profession and psychiatry in particular, that attracts the sort of person who will deliberately put a seriously ill child into a swimming pool and stand watching as he drowns. The expert who knew best, who would brook no argument, and who insisted the childs weakness would disappear once he ran out of breath, was wrong. Had the boy fully clothed mother not jumped in to save him, he would have drowned
AN INTOLERABLE OBSCENITY by Gurli Bagnall, 21 March 2005
The job description for Trainee Clinical Fatigue Therapists in some of the new network of 12 Fatigue Clinics across England, was the last straw. While the language used was not unexpected, to see it in black and white was nevertheless a body blow to those who suffer Myalgic ncephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) as defined by the WHO, for it is at them that the proposed "services" are aimed.
COOKING THE BOOKS by Gurli Bagnall, December 2004
"'You've got the fox in charge of the henhouse," DeAngelis said in an interview. 'The pharmaceutical industry spent $4.9 million in 2003 to lobby the FDA. That's like saying, I'm going to lobby the police department to keep cousin Guido from getting arrested for bootlegging.'" (Philadelphia Inquirer, 23 Nov. 2004)
GWS and Simon Wessely by Gurli Bagnall, 15 November, 2004.
He [Simon Wessely] claimed to have had 53 conflicts of interest during the course of his career and exhorted all to accept that this was now the way of the world. “It is time we all grew up,” he said. “Everyone has conflicts. Everyone has agendas. Everything affects patient care. Our own personal prejudices, likes and dislikes….”
Anne Foxey, Nutrition Specialist, had a much better handle on the subject. Her rapid response stated: “The only free lunch is the cheese in the mousetrap.”
RESPONSE TO ELLEN GOUDSMIT, MISUNDERSTANDING re PACE by Gurli Bagnall, 27 October, 2004
Due to poor health, I have to be selective about the issues I follow. When PACE raised its head, I put it on the back burner for two reasons. First, if pacing is to be studied in conjunction with CBT and GET, then it is simply more of the same psychiatric regurgitation we have become so used to. On the other hand, it is a waste of time and money to study pacing on its own as a coping strategy, for there IS only one expert in this regard and that is the patient. Whether he suffers ME, cancer, heart disease, Motor Neurone or any other physical ailment, it is not for others, however well qualified, to dictate how much activity that person can and should pursue.
*O* MEitis? A SLENDER STRING TO OUR BOW by Gurli Bagnall, 24 October, 2004
In the UK, 1988 also saw a change to the title, MEitis. The psychiatric drive to this end had succeeded and the disease was re-named the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Sufferers quickly learnt that this was an attempt to trivialize them and their suffering, and to label the condition a mental disorder.
After many years of protest, the authorities reluctantly conceded that ground must be given. From then on, the disease was to be known as CFS/ME, but from the perspective of the psychiatric lobby, this presented a problem. While MEitis has been listed as a neurological disease by the WHO International Classification of Diseases for almost 50 years, an underhanded attempt was made to include it under mental disorders as well. Professor Simon Wessely failed to achieve this objective so now the pressure is on to delete MEitis from the official records altogether.
*O* TESTIMONY PRESENTED AT THE INQUIRY INTO THE GULF WAR ILLNESS AND "SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS" IN PSYCHIATRY.by Gurli Bagnall, 6 September 2004
"Patient welfare respected"? Now there's a novel idea and not one that is experienced by many GWS/I or ME sufferers. Perhaps that is because many are too ill to demand respect - they being bed bound, wheelchair bound and/or housebound often from the onset of their illnesses. AIDS victims, on the other hand, are rarely debilitated until the latter stages of the disease. They can make their physical presence felt.
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN by Gurli Bagnall
It was with considerable concern that I heard of the complaints leveled against The One Click Group, which have been made by persons whose identities are being withheld from the owners of that site.
*O* PSYCHIATRY AND PERFIDY by Gurli Bagnall, July, 2004
"Academic psychiatry has all but lost contact with the population it is supposed to serve..Criticism is, if not actively discouraged, then politely but very firmly ignored." N. McLaren, M.D. Psychiatrist, Australia, 1999
In the face of undeniable evidence to the contrary, X never admits to being wrong. In his (or her) mind, he is omnipotent. As a self perceived superior being, he demonstrates contempt towards others who he has neither met nor spoken to. He attacks their characters and personalities and makes no secret of his displeasure if his judgment is questioned.
The [psychiatric] Diagnostic Manual no doubt lists a condition or two under "Personality Disorders" that match the behaviour, but what happens when people in positions of power, such as politicians and medical diagnosticians, fit the description? What happens to society when the same politicians and diagnosticians receive pecuniary and other rewards for manufacturing mental disorders where none exist?
OPEN LETTER TO CONSULTANT, DR. JH by Gurli Bagnall, 17th February 2004
Your business is supposed to be health, but only on your terms - irrespective of whether or not those terms are in the patient's best interests. If someone does not respond or cannot tolerate your methods, tough! Correct me if my memory has let me down, but last time I looked, I believe The Health and Disability Commission's Act stated that the patient should be given all the options and allowed to make the choice if that is his or her wish.
Review: Video - Who Will Protect the Children? by Gurli Bagnall
"Who will protect the children?" is an apt title and as I watched the video, I thought of Gordon Thomas' book "Journey Into Madness - Medical Torture and the Mind Controllers" in which he said:
"Nothing I had researched before could have prepared me for the dark reality of doctors who set out deliberately to destroy minds and bodies they were trained to heal."
*O* Essay on R.E.D.D., or RnaseL Enzyme Dysfunction Disease by Mary Schweitzer
We certainly have significant evidence that RNaseL Enzyme Dysfunction Disease (R.E.D.D.) is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS).
RNaseL Enzyme Dysfuncion is a very serious condition. The patient needs to know as soon as possible whether or not he/she has it, because it means that we cannot defeat viruses the way normal people can. Anything that further weakens the body's ability to fight active viruses is frightingly dangerous for R.E.D.D. patients. Hence the CFS and M.E. patient community, which has warned the medical community for years of the potential danger of haphazardly insisting on pushing patients into exercise, was medically correct in doing so. (Confirmed independently by research conducted at the New Jersey College of Medicine that demonstrated that CDC-Defined CFS patients could not remain in aerobic metabolism for three minutes during mild exertion; they jumped from resting to anaerobic metabolism almost immediately.)
*O* Problems continue within U.S. government agencies by Mary Schweitzer
Despite efforts by the U.S. Congress to bring federal health agencies in line with the public's concern about CFS/CFIDS, both the NIH and CDC continue to behave as if on-campus interests were all that mattered.
The CDC will not publicize the results of their own Wichita survey, which led to an estimate of 500,000 persons in the United States, because it is still awaiting publication. One presumes they believe it will not have received the imprint of scholarly science until it has been published in a peer-reviewed journal --yet, they continue to ignore research that has already been published in such journals, when it has been conducted off-campus - that is, "outside-the-beltway. The most glaring example can be found in their refusal to publicize the dePaul demographic study, conducted by Leonard Jason et al, which was recently published in the Annales of Internal Medicine. This two-year study concluded that as many as 800,000 Americans may have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, that it affects all income and ethnic groups equally, and (as in the Wichita study), that 90 percent of Americans had not been diagnosed.
*O* Continuing Misstatements by CDC to Public , by Mary Schweitzer
CDC spokespersons appear to believe that an apology for "accounting errors" is sufficient to close the books on the behavior of the agency towards the disease Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and its victims. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are numerous discrepancies between information that has been provided by CDC at public meetings of the CFSCC (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Coordinating Committee of the Department of Health and Human Services), and information that has been given Congress, the media, and the nation's Executive. I wish to highlight three major examples to demonstrate the depth of remaining problems within CDC with regard to appropriate attention to a disease CDC has acknowledged to be "a significant health threat to American women [1998]," and "one of the top five priorites for CDC with regard to new and reemerging diseases [1995]."
The True Costs of Public Apathy Towards Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFIDS) by Mary Schweitzer
*O* Dealing with a flawed Social Security Disability system: Guilty until proven innocent by Mary Schweitzer
The Social Security Disability Insurance system, which is supposed to protect workers from suddenly losing all sources of income with an unexpected disability, is seriously flawed and becoming more so.
WE ARE ASSUMED GUILTY AND MUST PROVE OURSELVES INNOCENT.
CFIDS as a disease "for women" by Mary Schweitzer
One of the major problems with getting attention from the medical establishment for our disease is that it is a "female" disease. Not in the sense that more women get it than men, although 70 percent of victims are female. Rather, it is a disease that fits the attributes associated with "femaleness" in a gender-dichotomized intellectual framework. Which dooms our disease to disrespect, lack of interest, and even mocking.
Change the Name: Abandon "CFS" and Return to the name "M.E." [presented to the AACFS conference in Boston, October 1998] by Mary Schweitzer
Continuing to ask researchers who have already published papers with the term "CFS" in it is whether they want to change the name is counterproductive and unnecessary: the people of the United States of America, by way of their elected representatives in Congress, have communicated to the DHHS and the CFSCC that they would like the name changed. The obvious reasons include the failure of the CDC to convince the public that CFS is not merely "feeling tired all the time, complaining a lot about it, and latching on to the latest fad by saying that's what you have," (which is the vernacular translation of the words "chronic fatigue syndrome.") Given that 98 percent of patients at the time the name was chosen were female, there is more than a hint of gender bias in the particular choice of a name, and it is not coincidental that patients find it demeaning.
*O* An interview with Hillary Johnson
Is CFS contagious?
There is ample evidence for contagion. Over the last decade, scores of cluster outbreaks of CFS have been reported to the Centers for Disease Control from all over the country. A "cluster" is a sudden outbreak among a group of people who are connected to one another by place of work or residence. These include an outbreak among children in a small, upstate New York town called Lyndonville, an outbreak in a Nevada desert town called Yerington, and an outbreak among policemen in Spokane, Washington. In a 1992 research paper on the Nevada outbreak, Harvard researchers pointed out that there was enough evidence to "suggest the possibility of an infectious agent transmissible by casual contact."
*O* Back to the future by Hillary Johnson
But back to the research referred to on January 10. According to the CAA report, Wm. Reeves says his group has made the discovery that "chronic fatigue syndrome" patients "were far more impaired" than patients with "other conditions such as pulmonary disease, multiple sclerosis and osteoarthritis." CAA/CDC doesn’t enumerate any of the other conditions, but my point is: Isn’t this news at least fifteen years old? Haven’t other groups, composed of far more knowledgeable scientists with no history of contempt for "CFS" patients or stealing the money targeted for "CFS" research, come up with these same findings? Why is the CDC simply reproducing their results, rather than moving forward with biological research into the disease?
One answer might be that they are not competent to do biological research, which many would argue is the case. Certainly, in the cases in which they have tried, CDC scientists have been unable to replicate biological findings made by numerous other groups in the US and elsewhere.
Another reason, which seems equally viable, is that they are still trying to prove to themselves that what they renamed "chronic fatigue syndrome" in 1987-1988 is actually a distinct disease, and that patients are not lying about what has happened to them. In other words, two decades after they were notified of the outbreak in Nevada, CDC employees are still trying to convince themselves that this disease is worth their own or anyone else’s time.
*O* A few more thoughts on advocacy by Hillary Johnson, January 2004
In my book, with the help of a CDC insider, I documented the theft of millions of dollars, tagged by the U.S. Congress for ME/cfs research, by a cabal of scientists at the U.S. government’s Centers for Disease Control. That was the headline provoking news in my book, I suppose. Certainly, from a journalistic perspective, it was the news that should have attracted a general interest audience to the book. Citizens don’t like to hear about individuals in government stealing millions of taxpayer dollars and—the polite word—misappropriating—those dollars for purposes other than what those dollars were intended for. For such an event to occur within an American "health" agency seemed even more scandalous. Even my fellow journalists, the most jaded among them, were incredulous that a health-oriented agency would engage in skulduggery. The FBI? Yes! The CIA? Yes! The Pentagon? Yes! The little CDC in Atlanta, Georgia? You’ve got to be kidding!
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