Another powerful doctor whose misogynistic, condescending psycho-babble carries far too much weight. If one of my undergraduate students had offered such unsabstantiated waffle I would have politely but firmly asked them to apply themselves more to their subject matter and return to my seminar room when they are (not feel or believe to be) better equipped to participate in research-based debate. The type of interview I have just listened to is detrimental to people’s lives and adds further to the general hatred and abuse severely ill patients are subjected to. The abuse is not merely personal and a bit hurtful, it cuts to the very core of people’s existences, e.g. when doctors refuse to write sick notes, when insurance companies refuse to pay, when housing benefits are withheld on the basis of someone not suffering a ‘real’ illness. So, yes, this sounds like hate speech to me, as it is a thinly veiled invitation to further neglect and ridicule of human beings who are desperately ill. As I type this introduction to a brilliant blog post by Jeannette Burmeister, I cannot swallow or speak due to a severe secondary bacterial infection. I do not believe I am in a delicate nervous state or that my feverish, frail (yet impressively strong?) mind dictates I experience a raging throat for the fifth week and counting. It is objectively there, there is absolutely nothing I can tell myself that will let me transcend my horrendous infection and float away into the sunset. Neither did I dream up intestinal bleeding or any other of the unsavoury and painful symptoms that are directly linked to ME and that I do not imagine I experience (or some such convoluted hocus-pocus). Please do not just stand there and tell people to ‘witness’ it, as Jeannette has also pointed out in her post. I do not cling to my hospital experiences  of the past, they were horrendous yet life saving, in short, medically necessary interventions for my survival that seems to offend certain doctors so much. I am, like hundreds of thousands of others, ill. Why are some doctors deeply insulted by this pretty straightforward fact? I expect science to deliver valid findings, not patriarchal gibberish. Or is it  my frail little woman mind that believes itself to be angry and hurt now, entirely without a reason? Judge for yourselves.