As a doctor in the media - apart from my newspaper articles I do some radio work and the occasional spot on TV - I am acutely aware that my words can sometimes be misinterpreted.

I was asked some years ago to comment on the different aspects of post-viral syndrome, and happened to mention that research was taking place in to chemical changes in the brain in sufferers.

I was assailed the next day that I had said that the illness was all in the mind' when I had done no such thing. But the impression remained among my critics that I had dismissed people with chronic fatigue as malingerers and depressives. I have been shy of writing or talking about it ever since.

So I was sympathetic to my fellow medical journalist, Ben Goldacre, when he described his experience on a Radio 4 programme about the use of complementary medicine in back pain.

He suggested that education on the causes of back pain, cognitive behaviour programmes, and active exercises would be as successful in helping people with chronic back pain. It sounded very reasonable.

But he used the phrase psychosocial interaction' in describing the technique. And that appears to have been his mistake.

Three days later, a listener wrote in to the PM programme on Radio 4 the following: Ben Goldacre said that 90 per cent of back pain problems are psychosomatic disorders. What planet is he on? While I would agree that there are a lot of schmucks out there that want to sit around and skive off work every day (and thereby make the problem even worse), never tell me my backache of 20 years is imaginary. OKAY?' I can understand why Dr Goldacre was upset. He never suggested that anyone's backache is in the mind' - psychosomatic.

He didn't use the word psychosomatic' - a psychosocial interaction describes the problems arising when real pain is altered by the patient's circumstances, which could be stress at work or at home.

In every illness there is a psychosocial element, and we have to take it into account when we evaluate any treatment - such as acupuncture for a back pain.

Some people will respond better than others to any treatment, and their circumstances make a difference to the response.

That listener's response also worried me. It was angry, unreasoning, and aggressive.

All that Dr Goldacre was trying to do was to explain the ways in which doctors can try to help their patients.

The listener is convinced that there are a lot of schmucks wanting to skive off work every day.' I'd like to put that calumny to rest. As a family doctor with many years' experience of people with chronic illnesses, and particularly of chronic pain, I don't know where these people are, and whom they are asking to help them stay off work.

The vast majority of people I've had to deal with are only too keen to get back to work after any illness.

When I am pondering over whether or not a patient can go back to work, I tend to err on the safe side, to give them a few extra days of convalescence, to get fully work-fit before they go back.

So let's get rid, once and for all, of the idea that we have millions of work-shy people in Britain - we don't. And let's have a little understanding for people who are worse off than we are.

It's coming close to Christmas - how about a little of that goodwill to all men' that is at the heart of the Christmas message?