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French Woman Gets €800/month For Electromagnetic-Field 'Disability'

Posted by Soulskill on from the better-stay-away-from-that-glowy-orange-ball-in-the-sky dept.

An anonymous reader writes: If you were dismayed to hear Tuesday's news that a school is being sued over Wi-Fi sickness, you might be even more disappointed in a recent verdict by the French judicial system. A court based in Toulouse has awarded a disability claim of €800 (~$898) per month for three years over a 39-year-old woman's "hypersensitivity to electromagnetic waves." Robin Des Toits, an organization that campaigns for "sufferers" of this malady, was pleased: "We can no longer say that it is a psychiatric illness." (Actually, we can and will.) The woman has been living in a remote part of France's south-west mountains with no electricity around. She claims to be affected by common gadgets like cellphones.

23 of 456 comments (clear)

  1. When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Subject says it all. It really is time to start taking lawyers and other bottom feeders to task. Mentally ill people should be treated for their paranoia, not have it confirmed.

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    1. Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum by thedonger · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Subject says it all. It really is time to start taking lawyers and other bottom feeders to task. Mentally ill people should be treated for their paranoia, not have it confirmed.

      I'm just happy to see it happen somewhere other than the US. Turns out other countries have nuts and greedy lawyers, too.

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    2. Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum by Adambomb · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Wonko the Sane had it right, time to live outside the Asylum.

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      Ice Cream has no bones.
    3. Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum by sexconker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Like what?

      Restless leg syndrome?
      Non-24?
      SAD?
      PBA?
      ADD?

      All a bunch of bullshit invented to sell drugs that don't even WORK.

    4. Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum by Shortguy881 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A symptom is not a disease. Restless legs is a symptom just like overreacting to nearby electronics. Making useless diagnoses based on a single symptom with no underlying explanation is not really a diagnosis nor a disease.

      --
      Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
    5. Re: When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum by hackwrench · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you know that ADD / ADHD are just excuses for why isn't my parenting technique working, then you must know what parenting techniques work to eliminate the symptoms. Elucidate us.

      Also, in order for ADD/ADHD to not be real then the symptoms must not be real and no parenting technique will work any more than the drugs. Also the observed improvement attributed to the drugs must be fake too. So what is the true nature of the observed behavior if you are so certain it's not real?

    6. Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum by Dragonslicer · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Subject says it all. It really is time to start taking lawyers and other bottom feeders to task. Mentally ill people should be treated for their paranoia, not have it confirmed.

      I have no problem with the lady getting assistance, but unfortunately the courts think they or a jury can decide what the cause is.

      Based on just the title, I had no problem with it either. My first thought was how nice it must be to live in a civilized country that treats severe mental illnesses as a legitimate disability.

    7. Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum by dcollins117 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      From TFA:

      "Several people in the UK have been diagnosed with electrosensitivity and received help for the disability but any financial allowance usually refers to a different name for the condition or a related condition," it [the court] said in a statement.

      I'll bet the judge decided she was so delusional as to be unfit to work, and gave her benefits based on that. The "different name for the condition" could be delusional thinking (or whatever the correct psychiatric term for that is - IANAP). Mental illness certainly can be debilitating.

    8. Re: When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum by DroolTwist · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I grew up when it was OK for parents to discipline their children. I had to pick my own switch once, and only once. My kids did as well. And guess what, they grew up to be successful in school and their careers.

      Being taught to respect authority isn't 'contending' with anything. They aren't going to grow up and be mentally ill due to getting a spanking when they misbehave. I firmly believe a lot of problems with today's children/young adults are a direct result of being brought up knowing there are no consequences for their actions.

    9. Re: When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum by ClickOnThis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There are plenty of ways to discipline a child without hitting them. For example, negative punishment: take something away from the child that s/he likes, such as a toy, television, internet, etc.

      Also keep in mind that punishment does not train behavior, it merely stops it. Training behavior is best accomplished with rewards.

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    10. Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum by dissy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So the conditions are fake and the drugs don't work??

      I'm curious.... how would you know if the drugs were working?

      It's pretty simple.

      Step 1) You remove her from all electromagnetic fields and see if her symptoms change.
      Step 2) You put her back in electromagnetic fields and provide her with drugs in two different periods (One using real drugs, one using placebos) and see if her symptoms change accordingly.

      Since no one even bothered with step 1 according to the article (There is still sunlight in that remote area she is living in so she is still exposed to EM fields much stronger than we can produce on earth) and they refuse step 2 outright, we can conclude she has no sensitivity to EM since clearly her symptoms change while still being influenced by the same fields the entire time.

      She basically claimed similar to "I experience pain while living in a house with a front door, so I moved into another house without a front door (She says while standing in the front doorway) and my pain went away! Clearly removing the front door that I didn't remove means the door was the cause of my pain"

      In that made up example we have the same evidence: The claimed cause of her problem was present in both cases so should have the exact same symptoms, yet her symptoms do change, so clearly the cause is something else.

    11. Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum by sjames · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why would it no longer be a disease just because it is easily avoided and is best cured by something other than drugs?

    12. Re: When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum by aaronb1138 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Wait, I must have ADD then because when I am on a call and the content is boring (especially conference calls) I frequently fiddle with objects around or near my desk to amuse myself.

      That isn't ADD, it's being bored, whether due to intellect, knowledge, or interest level in the subject. Everyone deals with boredom. It's like the weird dream of driving a car from the back seat. It's an astonishingly common dream, but most people think it's strange because they haven't heard another person talk about it before. You're not special, sorry.

    13. Re:When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum by Rhywden · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The cure to the common cold is staying in bed, keeping hydrated and waiting it out.

      Does this mean that the common cold does not exist as a real condition?

    14. Re: When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Don't be afraid to let kids scream a couple of times. Totally ignore them when they do it. They'll soon figure out it doesn't work.

      The message is quite the opposite.
      If I have trouble and need my parents: they don't care.

      ask kids what they want to do today, what they want to eat, or whatever. You don't ask kids what they want, you tell them
      The message again is quite the opposite: you are worthless shit, you eat what i give you, you do what I tell you.

      You put whatever it is everybody else is eating on a plate in front of them and tell them to eat it. If they don't eat it, they go hungry.
      Exactly, better then forcing it down their throats. Ah ... that is the main reason why I don't talk to my parents anymore since 30 years.

      You are an complete idiot and I hope you never have children. Actually as an Atheist: I pray, you never have children

      --
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  2. Re:PBS show of cellphone cancer recently by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A documentary isn't a study.

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    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  3. The voters vote themselves bread and circuses by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What do you expect from a "modern" welfare state?

  4. Re:Not this shit again... by D.McG. · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It was probably cheaper to settle for €28,800 than to pay for a study.

  5. Camel's nose under the tent by goodmanj · · Score: 5, Insightful

    See, this is why you can't give pseudoscience an inch. Every little success validates it in the eyes of its own practitioners, and legitimizes it in the eyes of the public, until society tumbles down the rabbit hole of paranoia and irrational fear of the harmless on one hand, and blind trust in actually harmful practices on the other hand.

    1. Re:Camel's nose under the tent by goodmanj · · Score: 3, Insightful

      By your argument, since scientific findings are always subject to revision in light of future data, they can never be used for decisionmaking. Well screw that, I don't want to live in a world where a double-blind placebo trial carries no more weight than a magic 8-ball.

      I do agree with you on two things: first, that she should be given a proper well-blinded test for electromagnetic sensitivity, which I guarantee you she'll fail because *nobody* passes them except by chance ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... ). And second, we agree that this lady "needs help as she is clearly suffering". How about we have someone use actual medicine to figure out what's actually wrong with her, rather than giving her a bit of money and letting her suffer for the rest of her life because she wrongly thinks the wi-fi is to blame?

  6. Re: Not this shit again... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But, paying to settle sets precedence. That can be more costly in the long run.

    It should be very easy to verify whether people have this 'sensitivity'. Put subjects in a faraday cage and test whether they can detect RF or not in a blind study.

  7. Re:Not this shit again... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > Anything with a double-blind requirement falls well short of settling an issue because it is subjective.

    That is nonsensical. A test has a double blind requirement because it's the standard in removing bias from the equation.
    The question of exactly what you're testing and to what degree, is not subjective either. What you are saying (badly) is experiments are often used to justify application in out-of-context scenarios (see Chemotherapy). That is a separate socio-political issue, outside of the realm of science and has nothing to do with subjectivity, but a lot to do with ignorance and malfeasance.

  8. Re:That's 800€ by the way. by dargaud · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why ? You say "800 euros" or "800 dollars", so why place the sign before ?!?

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