Books & snails & MRC behaving badly

Great to see that The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elizabeth Tova Bailey has won the Stanford 2012 William Saroyan Prize for writing. (I have hazy/fond memories of Stanford, my brother studied there many years ago). If you google Amazon and 'myalgic encephalomyelitis', there's an Aladdin's cave of books, the quality varies greatly, but this is easily one of the best. It's a gem and made me think differently about snails, this one was on the shed for a few days last month.

Nice to have some good news round this illness after the latest nonsense from the MRC, which should really get a gold medal for misrepresenting neuroimmune illness. Seems to have changed its tune - or gone back to the same old same old - since its last outing. It really is a kind of medical mafia. (I love Dr Derek Enlander's comment: The thrust of financial gain perhaps to the insurance companies and the government were priorities rather than improvement of the patient condition. Little was mentioned about the relapse that we frequently see in ME/CFS patients after exercise. This was also illustrated by Dr Shepherd’s figures. Presently we are studying pre and post exercise immunology, pathophysiology and genetics in a study at Mount Sinai Medical School, New York in a privately funded million dollar grant.)

And more here on narratives of illness, a post from 2011.