ableism
I remember when I was a kid in the 90s and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome first became a household name. I made fun of it, because everyone else was making fun of it, and I was desperate to fit in. 1/8
ableism
Today, we know that *lots* of diseases are autoimmune and triggered by viruses or other invaders: Long COVID, ME/CFS (long mononucleosis), MS, AGS (red meat allergy from tick saliva), probably T2 Diabetes (not just T1), possibly even Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. 2/8
ableism
Because if it's genetic, then healthy people can't catch it. In eugenics terms, healthy people can tell themselves that they're healthy because they're genetically "better", and that people who are chronically sick somehow "deserve" it due to faulty genes. 4/8
ableism
But if these disorders are caused by a faulty immune system, something that has little to nothing to do with genetics, then eugenicist healthy people aren't "superior" to sick people. 5/8
ableism
Eugenicists want eugenics to be true because they believe in the Just World Fallacy, the bogus idea that good things only happen to good people and bad things only happen to bad people. 6/8
ableism
Being vulnerable to these diseases means that the healthy eugenicists aren't "superior" to sick people, their health is due to chance and not due to something that's a part of them. Worst of all to them, it means that the world is not fair and never was. 7/8
ableism
That's horrifying to them, because if the world is fundamentally unfair, then all those people they were assholes to, or even killed through eugenicist projects, deserve an apology. 8/8
ableism
There is a lot of resistance to new diagnoses in medicine, and to new understandings of diseases. Our society consistently downplays the connections between chronic diseases and their causes, trying to convince everyone that it's genetic. 3/8