The Why

The Historic ME/CFS Call To Arms

De: Hillary Johnson

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

If you have wondered why scientific progress in unraveling ME has been stymied for years, Hillary Johnson's The Why offers a concise history of the American Center for Disease Control's failures, buttressed by explanations of the agency's motives. Johnson (author of Osler's Web) enumerates the harm CDC has caused sufferers, comparing the CDC's pseudo-science with 1930s eugenics. She makes the case that in lieu of undertaking realistic disease control methods, the agency has instead mimicked techniques employed by major corporations to mislead and manipulate public opinion. Rather than admit mistakes or start anew, the agency has used corporate messaging and re-branding to mitigate damage control. It has appropriated what it calls "thought leader" status in the realm of ME in the form of meaningless, science-free diagnostic criteria in what one doctor has described as "The most curious invention of American scientific imperialism that one could imagine." It's hard to arrive at the end of The Why without a clear sense that since the CDC's involvement in the disease in the mid-1980s, the health agency has done nothing to help patients and everything to hurt them.