Quoted message said:Subject: MCS is a form of Somatization Disorder
From: [email hidden] (Andrew Kingoff) (MCS Is Real)
Date: 4/20/2004 8:20 AM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id: <[email hidden]>
Quoted message said:On The Misdiagnosis of MCS
MCS is a form of somatization disorder
Quoted message said:Psychobabble...
The entity *somatization disorder* is psychobabble and is obtained from the
DSM-IV manual and is used by psychologists and psychiatrists.MD's have borrowed
the entity for their own uses. It is a spurious diagnosis with no laboratory
indicators.
that somatization disorder is a kind of junk category into which physicians
dump patients presenting with mind/behaviorialsymptoms and/or a history of such
which the physician does not fancy or understand, especially if the patient
does not present with symptoms or symptoms which are not separate diagnoses
(also anon-scientific way of separating symptoms and causality) . I mentiont
his because mercury and lead are both known to cause primarily "psychiatric"
symptoms, with a history of emotional instability, etc.in patients.
So a "scientist" is someone who makes "a priori" judgements about what
neurological symptoms a heavy metal poisoned patient can and cannot have. A
"scientist" demands laboratory indicators whenever his fraternity does so.
When the fraternity does not do so, the esteemed scientist Rx's Prozac like
*mad*. But if the patient's complaints appear in some kind of package which
don't meet the prejudices of the male clinician/voodoo doctor, then it's
necessary to pull out theDSM-IV manual and wax on about scientific discipline
and create from thin air a "somatization disorder".
It's just another way of saying that one can create a loose definition of a
nebulous condition and then stretch it to label anything which appears bizarre,
so that rather than actually diagnose and solve problems you can dump the ones
you don't like into the recycle bin andlet the DSM-IV manual thumpers profit
from the stash. That way everybody is happy. The male voodoo doctor gets to
see himself as a scientist and the psych therapist gets another client.
I believe that SD is used by doctors who do not like the idea that conditiions
which affect the brain cause certain mental states and behaviors which are not
in keeping with their own requirements for how disease is supposed to manifest
in the human body. I believe the medical profession has an alliance with the
psych profession because they share a common belief system.
No, the starting point is to go back to college and unlearn the psychobabble
taught to physicians in med school. But that cannot be done--with all the
psychological investments involved in the career and selfhood and one's
supremecy of being--so instead one wages war on the Chronic Fatigue,
Fibromyalgia, and Multiple Chemical Sensitivitysyndromes, since these syndromes
are diseases of both body and brain,in which affective disorders are documented
in all three. But since the Freudian-psychobabble-educated physician suffers
cognitivedissonance when presented with these, the syndromes must be attacked.
Continuing education is not an option. Instead, reality must be shaped to fit
the psychological needs of the profession, and the patients need to be hazed.
So rather than counsel with a psychotherapist over issues of selfhood and
megalomania and deep insecurity which interfere with the process of continuing
education--which is also the scientific process itself--it is necessary to
reformulate these disease syndromes so that they fit into the 20th-century
mind-body conceptual dualism taught to physicians, in which brain diseases are
separate from diseases of thebody and mind states are separate from both. This
needs to be done despite the fact that poisons such as lead and mercury have
been known for 100 years to poison the brain, body, and mind all at the same
time. So Science needs to be bent and manipulated to serve a profession which
maintains a conceputal framework which is not rooted in Science, and those
teachings must be maintained for those sychologically inclined to conservatism
and intellectual dominance,all properly wrapped in the impressive rhetoric of
scientific and clinical objectivity.
A lot of your responses are flak garbage which you use to exhaust pariticpants.
I made my position perfectly clear. Decades of psychobiological research,
including century-long scientfically acquired knowledge on the effect of
poisons such as heavy metals on the brain, show that mood and mental states can
and do derive fromorganic origins. Meanwhile state-credentialed MD's are
writing books and articles about how biological psychiatry is "pseudoscience",
a"myth", and a "fraud". On *this* subject the present generation is corrupt,
and is not going to give up its intellectual commitment to the psychobabble it
received in med school.
On the issue of MCS, ascribing "affective disorders" to "psychologicalf actors"
is an opinion which is rammed through as Science. It is accompanied by
dismissive descriptions of mind states and behavior of the patients, with all
kinds of unscientific judgements andassumptions as to 1) whether those mind
states and behavior arelegitimate (e.g. fear of chemicals, stress of chronic
illness), and 2)whether the mind states and behavior have an organic or
non-organic origin.
MCS *will* receive a fair hearing only when the medical profession gives up its
intellecutal commitment to the teachings of psychology as the only explanation
for how mind states and behavior alter with disease.
You asked me for evidence of "mind-body conceptual dualism" and I just gave an
example from a psychobabbling physician in this thread. Your technique is to
bait and throw out idiotic flak, so that now we can have a separate existential
debate as to whether there really is adualistic mind-body conception in modern
medicine.
Yes, physicians do recognize a connection between the two--they call it
somatization disorder. That is, your boyfriend broke up with you and you are
self-pitiful due to your past child raising and have along history of
maladaptive behaviors and you have sunken into depression and can't concentrate
and now your immunity has sunk and now you have an infection etc etc. They may
*also* talk about a"psychological component" as being the result of chronic
stress from the illness.
But the medical profession is selective about when the connection operates in
one direction vs. the other.
The fact is, there isn't an economy for the problem of chronic mercury and lead
exposure causing maladaptive dysfunctional unhealthy minds and behaviors. Not
because the science doesn't exist to support it. But because the economy
doesn't exist to produce the professional intellect to study, talk about, and
treat it. The psychotherapists and psychologists would be in less demand.
There would be no drugs to patent. Hence the facts are dropped from
consciousness. That mercury and lead f**k up people's emotions and minds (in
addition to a hundred other symptoms) is so dropped out of consciousness that
MD's can write books that argue that Biological Psychiatry is a fraud.
As a result, one must conclude that MCS is not caused by poisons--which just
about everyone who has the illness and has clinical experience treating it
argues--but rather is a somatization disorder.
This is how economy and professional cultures distort reality and allow
ingrained assumptions and bias to manipulate and distort the process of
scientific inquiry.
No, many physicians recognize that they are often dealing with illnesses that
involve both the mind & the body. It would seem as if you are attributing
their admission of this fact to some sort of denial instead. Incorrect. But
commonly the same conclusion that some patients erroneously arrive at if the
doc declines to attribute the illness to physical factors alone.
This thread is in the context of MCS. Within the context of this subject
physicians *do not* generally conceive or discuss depression*or* anxiety in any
terms other than the psychologist's, regardless *how* the psychologist
constructs the relationship, it is the*psychologist's* constructiona and the
psychologist's ideology. The very own terminology employed by the author of
the medical textbook cited, who is at the pro-MCS end of the debate *within*
the mainstream, is that it is an illness with "psychological factors".
Since you mention arthritis in the context of this thread on MCS (which is a
disease its propopents argue is the result of*poisoning*), I will say that
poisons such as lead and mercury commonly causes brain symptoms *first*,
because these poisons are emically attracted to brain tissue. The first stage
of these poisonings is commonly brain symptoms only. Patients may suffer
depression or anxiety for *years* before the symptoms originating in organs
*below neck* emerge in sufficient degree to cause the patient to seek care. So
the depression in these cases does *not* follow arthritis and the depression is
not something "psychological" *asdistinct* from the physical. The depression
is not of the"psychological" domain. It is a physical symptom no less than
arthritis. It is not a "component" and it is not a "factor". It is
a*symptom*.
The problem is conceptualizing depression and anxiety as being in adifferent
category than "physical" symptoms. This division in thought is reflected by
your own use of language and the very manner in which you discuss depression in
relation to other symptoms. Depression commonly bears no relation to the other
symptoms except they both share a similar cause in some *poison* which has
attacked the brain together with other organs in the body.This conceptualizing
is largely responsible for the opposition to these diseases by the medical
profession.>
Depression is not a *component* by "a priori" assumption. If doctors want to
assume the nature of the pathology in a conceptual framework and language
*originated by psychologists*, then they should seek psychology as a career and
*not* human physiology. If doctors want to educate us about how depression
affects human health--but *not* how mercury and lead affect affect brain and
emotional and mental health--then they should be psychologists and lecture on
Ophrah Winfrey, but *not* manipulate the research and interpretation of MCS
research by projecting their own indoctrination onto reality.>
Depression needn't be a *component* and it needn't be a *factor *simply because
psychologists (and physicians loyal to their ideology) insist that it be so.
I do not agree that I am arguing with myself and I do not agree we are simply
talking about terminology. I have a good first-hand understanding of the
disease, I have a good understanding of non-mainstream discussions of the
disease, and I have good understanding of mainstream discussions of the
disease. Within the mainstream the depression/anxiety is presently discussed
as being a"factor" or "component"--*not* a symptom. Ten years ago the
depression/anxiety was discussed as being *causative*. There has beena gradual
shift in language as the disorder has been *grudgingly*accepted as being
somatic, but the acceptance has been gradual, in which the depression/anxiety
has altered from being "primary" to being a "factor" or a "component". No this
is not simply terminology but reflects changing conceptions of the disease as
the medical society isslowly accepting that chemical intolerance exists, but
cannot shake lose its belief system for how depression and anxiety play a role
in these diseases.
You say that much is not understood about the disease. Then I expect that the
medical society which you defend *suspend* its assumptiosn about
depression/anxeity being primary *or* a "component" or "factor"in any causative
way regarding chemical intolerance, and to cease using language which
communicates that very conception.
A neurologist who has decribed what actually happens in MCS is that the brain
is abnormally stimulated by the chemical and an electrochemical reaction occurs
in the brain in which the neurotoxicant glutamate is released and brain cells
swell and the patients suffers debiliitating symptoms. He further states that
this process is a process of ongoing injury to brain cells, a disease of
pre-existing brain cell injury with continuing brain cell injury uponchemical
exposures. He reached these conclusions after studying changes in EEG
measurements in which patients were exposed tochemicals such as paint,
gasoline, perfume, lacquer, etc. He found wildly altering EEG measurements
upon chemical exposure and found evidence of dementia in the patient in various
areas of the brain, with brain function deteriorating upon exposure. This
neurologist'sattempt 10 years ago to gather a scientific audience for his
findingsresearch was frustrated and obstructed while at the same time
descriptions by mainstream medical scientists and professionals of "affective
disorders" being primary or a causitive "factor" or"component" are accepted
without question. I think that if one examines the *neurological* observations
made and explanations advanced for what is happening in the brain upon chemical
exposures, one would find the descriptions of "affective disorders" and
"somatization disorders" as being causitive "components"/"factors" to be
asinine in their utter vacuity with regard to the subject.
So I do not even agree with the primacy which is given to anxiety/depression in
these diseases because examinations of the disease which actually have some
neurobiological depth find that anxeity/depression have little to do with the
disease process. It is a sideshow produced by persons who know nothing of the
disease and are prefectly content to send both the patients and neurological
investigations into their disease into the garbage chute. What has been
occuring has been a type of medical and sociological final solution to a
disease and its sufferers which appear to be bizarre to many uninformed.
But because the numbers of affected is so high, the culture and the society is
forced to make some kind of adjustments in its willingness to admit the reality
of the disease, but because it resists explanations outside of the intellectual
box it has been taught, it still cannot accept chemical intolerance because it
cannot fit the emical intolerance together with the affective disorders,
because it is not willing to alter its dogma regarding how affective disorders
present themselves with other brain symptoms in body-brain diseases.
No I'm sorry but this is not simply about terminology.
Don't kid yourselves. If you think the debate is resolved by physicians who
like to throw around big terms like "somatization" as if they are experts on
the topic, don't kid yourselves. Go get your Shrink's license and do the kind
psycho babbling and psycho labelling instead of passing yourselves off as
honest scientists. In that role, rather than as the frustrated shrinks you
presently are, you can get all the hard-ons you want writing profiles for
Abnormal Psychology journals.
By the way, I just recently spoke to a mother of an autistic child who said her
child has "raging" chemical sensitivities. This I think will demand some more
inventive, delusional, and self-elevating psychobabble from frustrated
psychologists in the physicians lounge. Autistic children make good meat for
physicians contemptuous of new diseases which stretch their education.
Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity
syndromes are beyond the medical education and intellect of the present
generation. The medical textbooks which properly deal with these diseases
medically and scientifically will be written by the next generation. The
present generation of sci/med professionals generally will protect its
intellectual turf until it retires, and hese patients will be scoffed at,
ridiculed, marginalized etc. until fresh yound minds, which will not find these
diseases to be strange, will give these diseases the study and respect they
deserve
