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By Penny Swift on February 8, 2014
Wildaisy has posted the full article.
More...Millions of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) patients all over the world are closing ranks in an attempt to stop the U.S. government’s initiative for a controversial health research plan that will see the Institute of Medicine (IOM) looking for ways to diagnose and redefine their illnesses.
Thousands of people already affected by these diseases have signed an Avaaz petition to try to force the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) to cancel its contract with the IOM to “develop diagnostic criteria” for ME/CFS. An attorney who was disabled by ME eight years ago (see photo above) has threatened to fight in federal court and “the court of public opinion,” and hundreds of others are preparing to wage war against the plan in any way they can.
The term ME/CFS refers to one of the most controversial “diseases” on the planet. In the United States alone, it is accepted that at least one million people currently suffer from its symptoms. There is no known cure and there is still a body of study that labels the condition psychological, if not psychiatric. There is also dispute about whether ME and CFS are the same condition, or whether they should be diagnosed as separate illnesses. The people suffering from this disease, however, have a different argument.
Patricia Carter, a former lawyer who has had ME for 27 years, and who says her life has been “destroyed” by it, originated the petition to cancel the contract between the HHS and IOM. Carter is also administrator of an internet forum, mecfsforums, for people suffering with ME and CFS, which currently has more than 6,850 members. What she and the forum’s members want is for the HHS to adopt a set of criteria already used in Canada, called the Canadian Consensus Criteria (CCC), as both the “research and clinical case definition” for ME and CFS.
“For decades, sufferers have been left with no real biomedical research and no effective treatments,” Carter told Guardian Liberty Voice. “Now the HHS is attempting to prolong this time by contracting with the IOM to redefine the illness.” She, like thousands of other MS and CFS patients, believe the research by the CCC should take precedence and be used....
Wildaisy has posted the full article.
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