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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.

10 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.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    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.

      --
      Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
    2. 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.

    3. 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?

    4. 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.

    5. 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?

    6. 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.

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

    A documentary isn't a study.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  3. 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.

  4. 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.