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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

A French woman has been awarded disability payments [theregister.co.uk] for a condition [wikipedia.org] which is not recognized by medical science:

Despite dispute over the very existence of the syndrome, it has emerged that a French court has recognised a 39-year-old woman's disability claim for "hypersensitivity to electromagnetic waves".

In the first case of its kind in France, the Toulouse court awarded Martine Richard €800 ($900) a month for three years - according to Robin des Toits, an organisation that campaigns on behalf of sufferers. Electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS or électrosensibilité in French) is purportedly caused by exposure to electromagnetic fields such as those generated by WiFi and mobile phones.

In a statement on Wednesday, Étienne Cendrier, Robin des Toits [robindestoits.org] spokesman, hailed the news as a victory, saying: "We can no longer say that it is a psychiatric illness." Victims of EHS say it causes headaches, joint pain, sleep disruption and dozens of other varying symptoms. Nonetheless the World Health Organisation has no clear diagnostic criteria for the condition [who.int].

Richard, a former playwright and radio documentary director from Marseille, says she is now forced to live in a remote part of the Pyrenees, without electricity, to escape from electromagnetic fields.

The French National Agency for Health Safety of Food, Environment and Labour (ANSES) accepts that those claiming électrosensibilité have real symptoms, but note the absence of "an experimentally reproducible causal link" to electromagnetic waves. A report is due in early 2016.

Original Submission