Thank you for this opportunity to address the CFS Advisory Committee. I am writing to in response to the call for comments regarding how the US government might engage members of the ME/CFS community, especially patients and their lay supporters, in addressing and solving the clinical, research, educational, and public health challenges of this condition.
2016 was a big year for ME/CFS advocacy. As we turn over the page to the fresh new year, the #MEAction Network Australia group reflects on some of the highlights of its advocacy efforts in 2016.
Friday Letters to Francis Collins
#MillionsMissing Holland has made its voice heard in the House of Representatives. House of Representatives member Linda Voortman has filed questions about ME based on the protest demands with Holland’s Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport, Edith Schippers. In the letter, Voortman asks the minister of health if she is willing to provide more
#MEAction Network UK’s statement denouncing CBT as a form of treatment for ME has been published in the January edition of Positive Health Online today. The letter was sent in response to FITNET, a controversial study that purported children and young people with ME could be successfully treated through CBT conducted over the internet. Esther
Carol Head has just been honored by O, Oprah Winfrey’s magazine, as one of fourteen 2017 Health Heroes, “visionaries who are healing bodies, minds, and communities.” “Although we would have preferred a more substantive piece (and inclusion of “myalgic encephalomyelitis,” or ME, as our disease name),” Solve ME/CFS said in a statement yesterday, “we are
After years of work and hundreds of hours of footage, Jen Brea’s documentary, now entitled Unrest, is ready for its debut. The film will be shown at the Sundance Resort as part of the Sundance Film Festival in January 2017; Brea’s Unrest was selected to premier as one of the Festival’s narrative documentaries. The Sundance
These demands were originally issued for the May 25, 2016 MillionsMissing demonstrations. Minor revisions were made to the demands in November 2016 to reflect community input on the definition, the primer, the name, and the need for improvements in clinical care. You can access and download a pdf of the revised protest demands by clicking
It was truly unsettling to learn about the news of an invited speaker lecturing at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on November 9, 2016. For decades, the speaker has been a staunch adversary of studying the pathophysiology of ME/CFS and refuses to acknowledge its root cause. I have written many times previously, including in an editorial in March of this year, on the aftermath of the revitalization of the Trans-NIH ME/CFS Working Group—specifically on the perils caused by what I then called “ME/CFS deniers” and “psychosomatization sympathizers.” We will not dedicate additional time to these individuals or elaborate on their misguided theories on our pages other than to make the following three points…
#MillionsMissing Crafts Competition We want to have fun while we work for equal treatment for ME sufferers! Win prizes! Submit photos and pattern of a crochet – or knitting project with the #MillionMissing logo. ( Also with a picture of the finished product). We pick three winners receiving a prize and they will be the designers behind #Millionsmissingnorway ‘s official patterns.
