My campaign

I will campaign in my own way, to get rid of the term "CFS", no matter the practical issues. I see it as the most urgent task facing us.

I was part of the Learning Difficulty/Mental Health , People First/Survivors Speak out movement back in the 80's; this coincided with the closure of the large  mental hospitals and asylums;  I witnessed , at first hand, how very meaningful and extraordinarily powerful  it is  for people to take their power back  - and how much names and labels mean.

When I trained as Nurse, my qualification was "Registered Nurse for People who have a Mental Handicap." Today, not that many years later, "mental handicap" is  just so inappropriate, the correct term to use is " Learning Difficulties".

A while ago, those  same human beings were being classed as "Idiots", "Imbeciles" , "Morons" or "Cretin",terms that were  slowly replaced by the much more "enlightened  "Retarded" in the 1960s.

"Spastic" is no longer  an appropriate label for someone who has Cerebal Palsy. Still the "Spastic Society" was going strong until fairly recently and who calls someone with Down Syndrome a "Mongol" anymore ?

 "CFS",  like so many labels before it is  toxic and   dangerous; unspeakable  abuse is being inflicted upon people with ME, especially the most severely affected in the name of CFS. 

People with ME  must take their power back !!

What about all those CFS papers that have been published ?? 

Get over it.

What about all those papers on "Mental Handicap" ? What about my own qualification ? What about all that published research on the "feeble minded" ?

You move on; that's all. In the history of human services, that is the way progress happens.  You make a stand for the truth and  move on from a clearer place.

You move on or face decades more of the same mistreatment.