If you or someone you love is living with ME/CFS or another chronic disease, then you probably have some experience with how little support, or, even information the current healthcare model can provide. My experience centred around disconnect and lack of information before eventually being simply lost and forgotten to the disease.
I learned that modern, Western, allopathic medicine is not the only school of medicine. I explored why the Western system adopts its current approach to chronic diseases. What I learned fundamentally transformed my beliefs over who I give authority to for my healthcare.
I believe this was the first major step in my recovery from myalgic encephalomyelitis – changing my perspective on who I should give the power of my healing to. I researched how modern medicine arrived at where it is today and this shaped my decision into taking my recovery into my own hands.
Should allopathic medicine be an authority on chronic illness when it doesn’t know the cause of so many chronic illnesses, is not capable of diagnosis through identification, and provides a potentially harmful nocebo – that there are no effective treatments?
For ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), Western, modern, allopathic medicine has:
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No clear diagnostic tool. Diagnosis is made only by exclusion, by ruling out other illnesses – its a game of Guess Who – The Chronic Disease edition – taking 1/4 of a year of the patient enduring intense symptoms to do so.
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No known cause. Despite decades of research and millions invested into ME/CFS, with more resources than ever before, how has modern science and modern medicine still identified next to nothing?
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No effective treatments. I received an offer of opioid based pharmaceuticals from my doctor as the only offering.
For many, the experience of engaging with doctors is one of dismissal, invalidation, and in some instances more harm than good. The phrase “it’s all in your head” is something far too many ME/CFS patients have heard – reflecting a system which often blames the patient when it lacks the answers. The harmful language of “there is no effective treatment, you need to learn to live with your symptoms” is, in my opinion, admitting defeat before attempting to try to heal and I believe this is harmful for the patient. If you speak with any neuroscientist, they will explain the incredibly detrimental effect of this language.
But this isn’t about incompetence. It’s about a much deeper crisis of accountability, corruption and values in modern Western medicine.
Medical Error
We often think of hospitals as places of healing. But according to a landmark 2016 study from Johns Hopkins University, over 250,000 people die every year in the United States due to medical error. That makes it the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer (Makary & Daniel, 2016).
To put that into perspective 9/11 claimed 2,977 lives and it changed global policy forever. Wars were launched. Surveillance laws were passed. Trillions were spent – the world changed forever.
Yet a quarter of a million deaths occur every year as a direct result of medical errors, misdiagnosis, and incorrect treatment issued from within the “modern medicine” healthcare system. The response? Barely a whisper.
In the UK, a similar pattern emerges, albeit almost hidden from sight and difficult to determine an actual figure. According to a report commissioned by the NHS and published by Imperial College London states that in 2020 over 237 million medical errors occurred every year resulting in approximately annual 1,750 deaths due to avoidable medical harm. One Government report suggests: “Of the avoidable deaths in 2022 in England and Wales, around 65% could be attributed to conditions considered preventable (around 82,000 deaths)”. In addition, the NHS spends around £14.7 billion annually compensating the harm it has caused through its practises (The Guardian, 2024). In 2025, The Guardian reported that the NHS’s total liabilities for medical negligence have hit £60 Billion (Guardian 2025), to put that into perspective – that would be a £850 (odd) gift to every single citizen in the UK.
This is not a fringe issue. It’s a systemic one. A design of solely manufacturing profits for the private healthcare industry and funnelling those profits to the directors and shareholders of one of the biggest industries ever known. In my opinion, the Western healthcare system as it is, is not about healing, it’s about funnelling money.
Some History of Modern Medicine
To understand the roots of this crisis, we need to revisit a turning point in medical history: the Flexner Report of 1910, funded by the Carnegie Foundation. This report restructured medical education in North America, pushing a strict model that emphasised scientific rigour. At the same time John D. Rockefeller financially incentivised medical schools in the West to drive medical doctor treatments towards pharmaceuticals and encouraged the wide-spread dismissal of natural, herbal, and holistic forms of healing across medical education institutions, (Priest, 2022).
On the surface, this professionalised medicine. But in reality, it pharmaceuticalised it. In the early 20th century, scientists discovered that pharmaceuticals could be derived from petrochemicals, or, oil. Rockefeller, whose empire was built on oil, had vested interest in petrochemical based pharmaceuticals. Funding medical schools that trained doctors to use patentable drugs – not natural therapies – helped turn health care into an industry, one that is still practised today.
This shift eliminated many natural, holistic and even community-based healing practices, ones that even modern science research is beginning to acknowledge can be potentially effective. It also laid the foundation for a model that sees the body not as an interconnected system, but as a set of symptoms to be suppressed. Petrochemical manipulation of the brain through pharmaceuticals, rather than naturally healing root causes became the norm.
So What Happens to Chronic Illness?
The Allopathic model of medicine can work well in emergency care, surgery and trauma. But, in my opinion, for multi-systemic, chronic conditions like ME/CFS, it’s deeply inadequate.
It cannot test for many illnesses and provides a diagnosis by elimination of others. This process takes at least three months in the UK in the case of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (for the patient, thats a quarter of a year living with those severe symptoms without even diagnosis, let alone treatment) and six months in the USA to receive a diagnosis.
When a system is unable to identify your illness, dismisses your experience, and claims there is no cure – whilst simultaneously being collectively responsible for mass preventable harm, I asked myself, why should this be my authority on my healthcare? I moved my attention away from the negativity of modern, western medicine and found Ayurveda, which icontributed to my full recovery of myalgic encephalomyelitis.
Who do you give authority to for your healthcare?
I am not anti-medicine. I am anti blind-trust.
Allopathic medicine has strengths, believe me, should I require an X-ray, surgical procedure or break my arm for example, I am fully in support of Western, allopathic medicine. But it also has blind spots, biases, and a documented history of failure and corruption. We owe it to ourselves to ask deeper questions:
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Who really benefits from a system that insists chronic illnesses have no effective treatments?
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Why are billions poured into pharmaceuticals, millions into root-cause research, yet patients are dropped and forgotten when physically unable to work?
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Why are holistic, natural, and “alternative” healing methods still omitted from Western medicine despite real-world evidence of patient improvement and scientific evidence of their potential healing effects?
Most importantly:
Why are we giving away our healing power to a system that abuses our trust?
This isn’t about conspiracy. It’s about accountability and progression of the human race. It’s about giving millions of people who are in pain, vulnerable and incapacitated, their lives back. It’s about recognising the limitations of a system that was never built to heal complex, chronic illnesses and diseases – a system shaped more by profit and industry than compassion and healing.
I made the conscious decision to look beyond Western, allopathic medicine in order to heal myself. I spent a year researching healing methods which have been proven to work and I took my healing into my own hands. I learned about Ayurveda, the medical school from India which has been around for about 4,800 years longer than modern, Western, allopathic medicine.
Ayurveda suggests that the body is “out of balance” with chronic disease and can be rectified through addressing a patients’ personal doshas with nutrition, herbal remedies and lifestyle practises such as fasting and meditation. It worked for me – now more than two years later I’m sharing how I achieved overcoming the biggest challenge of my life and fully recovering from my myalgic encephalomyelitis in the hope to inspire others.
Because healing is found in empowered, informed choice, not in isolation and dismissal by those who state that they know quite literally next to nothing.
References
Makary, M.A. & Daniel, M. (2016) ‘Medical error — the third leading cause of death in the US’, BMJ, 353:i2139. doi:10.1136/bmj.i2139. Available at: https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2139.full
Holpuch (2016) ‘Medical error is third biggest cause of death in the US, experts say’, The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/03/cause-of-death-united-states-medical-error?
The Department of Health and Social Care UK (2025), ‘Independent report Review of patient safety across the health and care landscape. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-patient-safety-across-the-health-and-care-landscape/review-of-patient-safety-across-the-health-and-care-landscape?
Campbell (2024), The Guardian: NHS spends £14.7bn a year treating patients in England hurt by care mistakes, says report. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/dec/12/nhs-spends-147bn-a-year-treating-patients-in-england-hurt-by-care-mistakes-says-report
Campbell (2025), The Guardian: NHS medical negligence liabilities hit £60bn amid surge in maternity payouts. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/17/nhs-medical-negligence-liabilities-hit-60bn-amid-surge-in-maternity-payouts
Priest (2022), How John D. Rockefeller Influenced Modern Medicine. Available at: https://www.potency710.com/how-john-d-rockefeller-influenced-modern-medicine/
