Response to Dr Crippen Guardian article mentioning Fibromyalgia

On Tuesday March 2nd, the "Dr Crippen" column in the Guardian newspaper had an article about the prevalence of whiplash injuries being diagnosed, in which derogatory comments were made about Fibromyalgia Syndrome (Fibro).

The insinuation of the article was that Fibro is not a real condition or a valid diagnosis.

Click here to read the article on guardian.co.uk.

"Dr Crippen" is the pseudonym of an anonymous and often controversial blogger, supposedly a GP principle with 20 years experience working somewhere north of London, just outside the M25. As well as writing the column in the Guardian, he blogs at the NHS Blog Doctor weblog, where his even less restrained articles are usually rants about the NHS and patients.

On Tuesday, he posted about the article in the Guardian, under the title Fibromyalgia : "whatever that is". In this post, he made it clear that his views on Fibro are bigoted and outdated and, having complained about "bad medical science" in the Guardian article, proceeded to "cherry-pick" a selection of Google search results on Fibro to back up his views.

Using a selection of internet search engine results from varying sources, such as Wikipedia, is never a good way to get reputable, evidence based medical information, something that one would hope a GP would be aware of.

In his blog article, "Dr Crippen" refers to the NHS Choices website information on Fibro and then proceeds to completely ignore what is said there, presumably because the evidence based information doesn't agree with his outdated views.

Fibromyalgia Syndrome is most definitely a real condition and this is not something that is genuinely debated by educated and up-to-date healthcare professionals. The increased pain response or hyperalgesia that characterises Fibro has been demonstrated using fMRI* (functional MRI) and this is just one of the many evidence based pieces of information to support our view.

If you would like to complain about the Guardian article, complaints can be sent to the office of the Guardian readers' editor at reader@guardian.co.uk.

FibroAction have sent a complaint and we are waiting on the Guardian to respond (or not) before we escalate this matter to the Press Complaints Commission. The more complaints that are made formally, the more weight our complaint will have so please email in a response rather than just commenting on the website.

* Reference: Gracely RH, Clauw DJ et al. Functional magnetic resonance imaging evidence of augmented pain processing in fibromyalgia. Arthritis Rheum. 2002 May;46(5):1333-43.