BMJ
Incredible how the BMJ's glowing endorsement of "poor" Simon Wessely , safer in Iraq and Afganistan apparently, than here among the UK ME Community, coincides with my reading of Martin Walker's new book : "Dirty Medicine The Handbook".
Walker devotes a whole chapter to what he calls the "Health Corporatists". Some of the names might surprise you; Stephen Fry for example. The paragraph on Charles Shepherd may or may not come as a shock.
Simon Wessely's listing extends over two pages - the arguments are well aired.
It is the Introduction to Dirty Medicine the Handbook that really bites. Walker's critique of the "intellectual rot", now endemic in science , is blistering and perceptive- especially as I struggle through yet another day of screamingly severe, hopeless agony for my wife. He argues that "next door's dog" could have come up with the UK Science Council's definition of science; whose real agenda appears to be one of censorship and support for corporate science. That is the theme of this excellent , must-read book, which exposes the alarming growth of corporate- backed "faux intellectual lobby groups" that are "running one of the greatest scams ever practiced."
"The people described in the pages of this handbook", writes Walker "are often undemocratic, antisocial elements, greedy, culturally ignorant individuals who put their abstract scientific ideology, their own careers and the profits of corporations they defend ahead of the citizen's needs or health care.." Science in the 21st century has slipped from a noble profession to "a tawdry condition based almost entirely upon the non-human values of technology, commerce and profit."
"On an endless number of fronts, "Walker states, "covert warfare has broken out between the people who have other ways of seeing and the increasingly powerful scientific apparatchiks of the post-industrial state."
..to say we, here on the edge, are angry is an understatement.
"The great majority of scientists have faithfully set up camp in the fields of the multinational corporations, and in many of the skirmishes between the powerful and the powerless, they have stolidly sided with power, showing themselves to be more interested in the pursuit of profit than in the public good."
Those of us who have personal knowledge of ME and the deliberate, decades -long suppression of its biomedical truth, in the corporate interests of the Medical Insurance Industry, know this stuff only too well; God knows we live and breathe it, we can't get away from it, for it dominates our existence and perpetuates profound, inhuman suffering.
As Walker stresses, the irony is that those with the most power appear to be "intellectual gnats" bereft of even a "smidgen of deductive reasoning"; that would include the BMJ.
Walker devotes a whole chapter to what he calls the "Health Corporatists". Some of the names might surprise you; Stephen Fry for example. The paragraph on Charles Shepherd may or may not come as a shock.
Simon Wessely's listing extends over two pages - the arguments are well aired.
It is the Introduction to Dirty Medicine the Handbook that really bites. Walker's critique of the "intellectual rot", now endemic in science , is blistering and perceptive- especially as I struggle through yet another day of screamingly severe, hopeless agony for my wife. He argues that "next door's dog" could have come up with the UK Science Council's definition of science; whose real agenda appears to be one of censorship and support for corporate science. That is the theme of this excellent , must-read book, which exposes the alarming growth of corporate- backed "faux intellectual lobby groups" that are "running one of the greatest scams ever practiced."
"The people described in the pages of this handbook", writes Walker "are often undemocratic, antisocial elements, greedy, culturally ignorant individuals who put their abstract scientific ideology, their own careers and the profits of corporations they defend ahead of the citizen's needs or health care.." Science in the 21st century has slipped from a noble profession to "a tawdry condition based almost entirely upon the non-human values of technology, commerce and profit."
"On an endless number of fronts, "Walker states, "covert warfare has broken out between the people who have other ways of seeing and the increasingly powerful scientific apparatchiks of the post-industrial state."
..to say we, here on the edge, are angry is an understatement.
"The great majority of scientists have faithfully set up camp in the fields of the multinational corporations, and in many of the skirmishes between the powerful and the powerless, they have stolidly sided with power, showing themselves to be more interested in the pursuit of profit than in the public good."
Those of us who have personal knowledge of ME and the deliberate, decades -long suppression of its biomedical truth, in the corporate interests of the Medical Insurance Industry, know this stuff only too well; God knows we live and breathe it, we can't get away from it, for it dominates our existence and perpetuates profound, inhuman suffering.
As Walker stresses, the irony is that those with the most power appear to be "intellectual gnats" bereft of even a "smidgen of deductive reasoning"; that would include the BMJ.
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