Why We Need May Awareness Day - Global Protest and More
Why We Need to Raise Awareness
Disease sufferers have different ways they try to raise awareness of their plight. This is often done by distinct colored ribbons and assigned months when events and activities are geared toward raising awareness for that particular disease.
Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) uses the color blue for the awareness ribbon and the month of May has been assigned as the month of awareness. All patients suffering from any illness have dire needs for attention, whether for funding for research or for proper care and treatment. ME patients, because of the history of neglect and malfeasance by the government health agencies, have the added responsibility to testify about their personal stories and about the dismal history of medical abuse.
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Easy Way to Create May Awareness
May Awareness
May is awareness month for the related complex immunologic and neurologic diseases (CIND):
ME, CFS, Lyme, GWI, FM and MCS.
May 12 is the specific date chosen to raise awareness for these diseases, because it’s Florence Nightingale’s birthday. After her groundbreaking work in nursing, Nightingale became bedridden for decades from a mysterious disease similar to ME.
This year, May12.org has developed an easy way to spread awareness across social media with a May awareness overlay for your Facebook, Twitter or other social media profile photo.
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Dutch ME-Community Appeals for Global Help: Sign Petition
Guest Blog submitted by the ME Global Chronicle staffMUPS (Medically Unexplained Physical Symptoms)
This is a guest post by ME Global Chronicle, a bi-monthly international online magazine, covering news on myalgic encephalomyelitis from all over the world. They are currently featuring a petition to the Dutch Health Council calling for the replacement of panel members to a government advisory committee who have a psychogenic bias of the disease.
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NIH Sidesteps Critical Problems with the ME/CFS Study
MEadvocacy would like to thank advocate Eileen Holderman for her consultation on the blog post.
MEadvocacy sent a petition to NIH to cancel and restart the NIH Intramural Study on ME/CFS because of the many significant problems with the study’s design and protocol and lack of myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) stakeholders’ input.
Since then, NIH has used various and confusing ways to communicate new and changing information about the study. As further information became available, we voiced our deep concerns about many of the significant issues with the study: multiple and ever-changing criteria, some of which are deeply flawed; biased and/or inexperienced investigators and advisors; additional problems with the study’s design; mistrust of the government health agencies and the problems with the way NIH is communicating.
This is a unique opportunity to design a robust study using the comprehensive resources of the NIH Clinical Center. It is crucial that this study be done with ME experts' and stakeholders' input from start to finish. This will ensure meaningful results and scientific advancement for patients who suffer from this serious, disabling disease.
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NIH Telebriefing Presentations and Protocol in a Nutshell
[Photo of National Institutes of Health Clinical Center]
MEadvocacy attended the National Institutes of Health [NIH] telebriefing on March 8th, 2016.
We issued a blog on March 9th with the question that we posted to NIH and the reply we received.
In this blog, we are giving the highlights of several presentations from NIH and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke [NINDS] regarding intramural and extramural NIH research. Many questions and concerns still remain, with some additional new ones. We will follow up with a blog with commentary on the call and the new protocol posted on the NIH website.
The NIH telebriefing audio file, released to us, is now available here.
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NIH Obliquely Dismissed 725 Voices While Stating that Patients' Input Matters
MEadvocacy’s Question and Reply at the NIH Telebriefing, March 8, 2016
MEadvocacy took part in the 10:00 am EST teleconference today from the NIH, which included a capacity of 100 listeners. There was an initial introduction by NIH director Dr. Francis Collins, followed by presentations from NINDS director Dr. Walter Koroshetz, NINDS program director Dr. Vicky Whittemore, primary investigator Dr. Avindra Nath and lead investigator Dr. Brian Walitt.
The presentations were followed by a Q&A period. Advocates had the opportunity to submit questions that were addressed by the panel, if chosen during the allotted time period.
MEadvocacy will elaborate on the full briefing at a later date. For this blog, we are submitting the question that we posed to the NIH followed with their reply.
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How Activism Empowers Progress
Lately, we have noticed a disturbing trend. Various members of the ME community have been chastising vocal activists/advocates for being too militant, because they’re afraid that somehow this anger will be used against them, or they just find anger distasteful in general.
The majority of advocates are women. Traditionally, women are socialized to be polite, submissive, and not rock the boat. This leads us to believe that there may be different cultural and social perspectives at play.
In the United States, the First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, freedom of peaceable assembly, and the right to petition for redress of governmental grievances.
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Misinformation About a Disease Has Dire Consequences
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Many look to our ME and CFS clinicians to transform into white knights coming to the rescue of a very neglected and mistreated patient population. More specifically, to take up the battle to confront the biased government institutions.
We suspect politics are at play, and understand many of the well-known clinicians have become reliant on government funding or fear government retribution. How do they fight without losing their ability to run their clinics? Can they strongly speak out against the government and stop perpetuating the inaccurate institutional bias causing neglect and harm? Especially when these are taught to the thousands of doctors and medical professionals.
We are grateful for the researchers and clinicians who have not been biased and have worked hard in our community to do research and treat patients in this hostile climate.
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Follow Up Reminder Email to Collins
MEadvocacy has not received a reply from Dr. Collins to the e-mail, which included the petition, sent on Monday Feb. 15, 2016 (see our blog NIH and CDC: You Got Mail). In the time since the original email was sent, Dr. Nath presented at the CDC Grand Rounds. Our petition outlined the reasons why we called for the cancellation of the study and since then new and disturbing information has been uncovered. We have sent a reminder email and gave Dr. Collins a response due date: end of Friday Feb. 26, 2016.
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