Who's sorry now? Norway first to apologise to M.E. patients

 Keep your words soft and tender because tomorrow you may have to eat them.  ~Author Unknown

Norway's Directorate of Health Apologises for Treatment of ME Patients


News item so moving it got me choked up with thankfulness! Me and all M.E. patients alike, I guess.

Thank God  for the Norwegian Directorate of Health's compassion, wisdom, humility and determination to change, clearly coming through in this unprecedented statement:


"I think that we have not cared for people with ME to a great enough extent. I think it is correct to say that we have not established proper health care services for these people, and I regret that." -Bjørn Guldvog, Deputy Director General of the Norwegian Directorate of Health

Here in the UK, we've grown accustomed to government ministers who seem to have their faces set against ever saying sorry. Many seem to see apology as a sign of weakness. 

Today this is surely a welcome sign of true strength. The grace to listen to solid research, learn from new insights and the wisdom to embrace these and move forward, is overdue and so welcome now.

I so hope that every Health Authority and government across the world can listen, learn and follow suit.

Now there is no longer any excuse to lock up our fellow M.E. patients in mental institutions, or detain them on psychiatric wards for imaginary conditions that, as we ourselves always knew, they never had. Some are still there, and this must urgently be addressed across the world.

Thank you, the Norwegian scientists behind the Rituximab study that shows M.E. to be an illness involving an immune response.

Thank you to the Norwegian Health authorities who have embraced this, taking the path less travelled, to bring justice and hope to one of the most denied, mocked, misunderstood and devastating diseases of modern times.

‘Cancer drug may also treat Chronic Fatigue Syndrome’, WebMD Health News, 19 October 2011
 
When the news first broke, as it came so hot on the heels of the XMRV disappointments, we wondered what to think. 


I read the research the first day news broke, summarised on the M.E. Association's link above. I joked on Twitter that I hoped the ignorant cynics in the media would not read "somatic" as "psychosomatic"! Even though "autoimmune"/"immune system" are clearly spelled out in the next sentence, we've all experienced hack journalism only too eager to call black white when talking down M.E. and tugging its forelock to the popular psychological school of naysayers.

The two doctors say the results indicate that CFS is in fact a somatic decease. "We think that CFS is an autoimmune decease. The immune system has a central role in this," they say to TV 2 News.  
(sic. 'decease' in the article - should be 'disease' of course.)


With today's news of apologies to M.E. patients and the turning of the tide a little further towards full recognition, care and treatment for our illness, I'm hopeful that those who snicker about it being "all in the mind" will quickly go the way of the Tyrannosaurus, or better still, to be seen as the mythical dragons they really are. Monsters we don't need to be afraid of any more.