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George MonbiotOctober 8, 2025 at 2:08 AM EDT

ME/CFS is a devastating condition that has long been denied, dismissed, psychologised and underdiagnosed. Research is at last starting to catch up with it, with glimmers of hope for those who have been left untreated for so long. There's a huge BUT coming ...🧵 theguardian.com

Just as we are beginning to understand the biochemical basis of this horrendous condition, the government appoints the man perhaps most responsible for the mischaracterisation of ME/CFS – Simon Wesseley - to its *overdiagnosis* commission. benefitsandwork.co.uk

Like the Tories, the Labour government is trying to drive down the number of people who qualify for disability benefits by insisting there has been an epidemic of “overdiagnosis”: a favourite theme of the BBC and the junktanks of Tufton Street. Never mind the science: what outcome do we want? In the firing line, as ever, are the UK’s hundreds of thousands of ME/CFS patients. As a practitioner once remarked, “the bastards don’t want to get better”. If there is one characteristic all the ME/CFS patients I’ve come across have in common, it is a desperation to get better. They desperately want to be able to work, to socialise, to experience all the other joys of life. But because the condition is so poorly understood, they have been repeatedly treated as if they were “malingerers” or “hysterics”. Which suits the government just fine. Many patients have been forced into useless and sometimes dangerous “buck up” treatments such as Graded Exercise Therapy and CBT, in some cases long after these “treatments” have been debunked. The most eminent advocate of these treatments? Professor Sir Simon Wesseley. To rub salt into their wounds, these patients have watched as the man many see as their tormentor-in-chief has been garlanded with honours, including a knighthood. His latest appointment is yet another blow. This commission points to where the government is heading. If the problem is “overdiagnosis” – which appears to be its foregone conclusion – then large numbers of people with horrendous conditions will be put through an even more punishing regime of tests and obstacles to qualify for benefits. On the one hand, medical science is beginning to get a handle on the very complex physiological basis of this disease. On the other hand, we can expect the greatest medical scandal (so far) of the 21st Century – the mass mistreatment and neglect of ME/CFS sufferers – to continue. The thread on one page: skywriter.blue