Sir, Ms Elaine Showalter's views on ME/chronic fatigue syndrome mentioned in the article "Women on the verge of hysteria" (June 9th) are just her personal opinions and are not based on up to date medical research.
For example, she states (on page 188 of her book) that Dr Stephen Straus of the US National Institute of Health made a comment in 1988 that ME/CFS could be a psychoneurotic condition; but she ignores his (well publicised) research published in 1992 which demonstrated statistically significant, abnormally low levels of the hormone cortisol in ME/CFS patients - clear evidence of a physical disorder.
When questioned about Ms Showalter's book, Dr Straus said: "My personal experience with ME/CFS over the last 18 years informs me that it is not an imagined disorder and that for anyone to suggest otherwise is to deny veritable suffering by far too many people."
Does Ms Showalter (whose qualifications are in English Literature, not medicine) believe that she knows more than all the experts in the World Health Organisation and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention who have classified ME/CFS as a physical illness? The latter has placed ME/CFS on its priority one list of diseases.
If anyone is still not convinced of the basic flaws in Ms Showalter's quackery, we can send (on receipt of a stamped, addressed envelope) a copy of a document entitled: "ME - the physical evidence". This lists 13 separate findings (with 31 medical references) showing why ME/CFS should be accepted as the debilitating and painful physical illness that it is. Yours, etc.,
Chairperson,
Irish ME/CFS Support Group,
PO Box 3075,
Dublin 2.