Intended for healthcare professionals

Rapid response to:

Editorial

What causes chronic fatigue syndrome?

BMJ 2004; 329 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.329.7472.928 (Published 21 October 2004) Cite this as: BMJ 2004;329:928

Rapid Response:

Re: What causes chronic fatigue syndrome?

Anthony Collings is a hoot, I am beside myself with mirth. What a prankster!

He couldn't possibly be serious, could he? Surely he is just pretending to mock people with ME? (Though why he would be motivated to do this is beyond me.)

Could he really be suggesting that when I was diagnosed with ME in 1984 by consultant neurologist Peter Behan at the Southern General in Glasgow, after 18 months of severe illness following Coxsackie virus, that it was down to a meme?

Surely not.

There was no internet, I had never heard of ME or Coxsackie. I was in no ME 'group'. I don't think there even were any in 1984.

The ludicrously inadequate CFS label had yet to be coined.

I had ME as defined by Dr Melvin Ramsay. I still have ME as defined by Dr Melvin Ramsay. And for the record I spent the first decade of my illness pushing myself to get better, only succeeding in getting worse.

I was a very ill, young woman, who went from straight 'A' undergraduate to bedbound, dreadfully unlucky to have picked up this enterovirus and not recover.

Also, I am half Asian, and can confirm that the statement below is frankly nonsense.

''Conversely, it has been suggested that being Asian (groups, arguably, whose distinctive cultural identities might well form barriers to memes) is a protective factor against CFS (4)"

I have a horrible feeling that Anthony Collings is not joking. I suggest he needs to educate himself. Sadly, he probably, won't.

Competing interests: No competing interests

21 June 2014
Nasim Marie Jafry
author of The State of Me, HarperCollins 2008
n/a
Edinburgh