Help Needed: Dr Sarah Myhill
I don’t make a habit of making requests like this so I hope you’ll indulge me for a moment. I’ll try and get to the point quickly.
There’s a disease called ME which can ruin peoples lives by depriving them of energy, to the point where even the mental energy required to read a book is simply not there. Imagine what it might be like to be confined to bed for years. ME is another name for CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome).
ME is poorly recognised by the medical establishment. Though it has been reclassified by the WHO recently, many UK health professionals remain ignorant of recent research and choose to treat ME as a psychological condition, not a physical one, and for example, treat patients by forcing them to exercise, which can cause relapses.
Standing in contrast to all this is Dr Sarah Myhill. She specialises in ME and goes way beyond what her profession requires of her to support ME sufferers. From her surgery she does phone consultations with sufferers all over the country and carefully prescribes treatments individually for patients.
Dr Myhill is at risk of losing her licence to practice. On the basis of an unsubstantiated, anonymous, complaint, the GMC thinks it is appropriate to withdraw Dr Myhills licence until such time as she can prove what she does is right and proper. (The GMC has attempted to do this several times before; The story is somewhat Kafkaesque.)
Yes, that means that in contrast to the principles of UK law, Dr Myhill seems to be guilty until proven innocent.
If the GMC succeeds, many UK ME sufferers will loose their medication and revert from a halfway normal life to something to something much harder to deal with.
If, like me, you think this all wrong then please help by signing the online petition or take a look at the how to help section on Dr Myhills website .
If you want to read more, here are a couple of starting points:
Dr Myhill’s page about the the issue
Wikipedia: Chronic fatigue syndrome
And more supportive articles here, here, here and here.
And if you got this far, thanks for listening.
