Charles Shepherd: It's time for doctors to apologise to ME patients

[pullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] “I left medical school believing that ME was not a real disease and I would probably never see a case. I was wrong”   [/pullquote] In this excellent piece in Monday’s Daily Telegraph, Dr. Charles Shepherd describes the history of ME’s neglect and says it’s time for doctors to apologize to their patients – and start listening to them.
He describes the long history of the disease – from the Royal Free Hospital outbreak to the World Health Organization to “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.”
The PACE trial petition also gets a shout out! (Thank you to everyone who signed and helped us to shout in one loud, strong voice.)
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4 thoughts on “Charles Shepherd: It's time for doctors to apologise to ME patients”

  1. this was not in the paper edition was not in the paper edition 🙁 she said that there is an article about CBT by Anna Mcgee (sp?) but not Dr Shepherds article :-(.

  2. Great effort by Dr. Shepherd.
    There is, however, one critical error.
    ME was never renamed CFS.
    No official process was ever conducted to take the Ramsay Acheson entity and convert it over to a new “CFS” name and conceptual framework.
    This mistake was simply a repetition of the confusion caused by the CDC’s naming of an outbreak “Similar to ME” as “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
    Similar is not the same as identical.
    The CDC/NIH never corrected this error, as it allows them to inflict whatever mischaracterizations they make about CFS back on another entity over which they have no real “scientific” control.
    “Killing two birds with one stone”

  3. Jargon aside, neither of these ‘labels’ aptly describes my condition, it’s symptoms or, the effect it has had, daily, upon my life over the past 2.5yrs. My life has been taken away. I look the same but am not. My friends do not understand and have drifted away, one by one. My professional career ended prematurely at 55 . . . my inner strength is all that keeps me going – forward, hoping that one day, soon, someone will empathise with or, at least, will take seriously, my suffering, as a genuine condition.

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