CDC denies large group of patients their civil rights

Anonymous Anonymous said:

CFS patients are in a decades-long struggle for their civil rights. Several points highlight the central role bigotry plays in marginalizing these medical orphans.

First, in defiance of Congress, the CDC took millions of dollars that had been earmarked for CFS research and diverted that money towards other goals:

http://www.cfids.org/advocacy/cdc-scandal.asp

Such was the contempt of the CDC for this disease that they were willing to assault democracy to defraud these patients. Imagine if the CDC had done that to your disease, and how little trust you would have in the government's motives.

Second, others often tell CFS patients that CFS isn't real. Insofar as CFS is defined by its symptoms, the charge is actually that the symptoms don't exist. Imagine if you told your physician that you have sore muscles only to be told “No you don’t”. To say that CFS is not a real disease is, then, to assert the psychic ability needed to refute the existence of a person's symptoms. This is not medical judgment. It is not science. It is superstitious bigotry that so-called skeptics would not themselves tolerate.

Third, the CDC is currently promoting the view that child abuse pre-dates CFS onset, and, by implication, that child abuse is a cause of CFS:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19124690

The editorial above expresses dismay over lingering belief in a vaccine origin to autism. Perhaps the editor could likewise express dismay over the impulse to blame parents for CFS, just as most people now express dismay over Dr. Bruno Bettelheim's defamatory accusations about the mothers of autism. Often referred to as the refrigerator mother hypothesis, Bettelheim in fact charged mothers with effectively running their own private Nazi concentration camps. His words, not mine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQY2oB3Rqdg

No, the contempt that is shown this group of people is not a result of reason or evidence. It reflects a feral instinct to marginalize the sick and the weak, and damns those who indulge it.