Introduction

This is the age of the metanarrative. Now that religion as a Grand Narrative has become extinct as a societal influence, metanarratives have taken over as the meaning for life, and the theme of the twenty-first century is the crusade against the industrio-medico-political complex. There are campaigns against mobile phone masts, MMR. New diseases have emerged: multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, candidiasis hypersensitivity, Wilson's syndrome.

New Diseases

The aim of campaigners with a new "disease" is to get the disease recognised by the medical establishment. This is an important part of the process of legitimisation. The psychological process involved is having an external locus of control - therefore the sufferer of chronic fatigue has myalgic encephalomyelitis, rather than psychogenic tiredness.

Legends

Erin Brockowitz's story has been glamourised in a Hollywood production as a altruistic crusader against big business but in reality she won a very large compensation award on very dubious scientific grounds. Lorenzo's Oil is another human interest movie about the parents of a child with adrenoleukodystrophy and their discovery of a cure where medical research had failed. The reality is rather more mundane - Lorenzo's oil has little if any effect on the disease. Another "home-grown" remedy was secretin for children with autism, now quietly forgotten.