MAGICAL MEDICINE: HOW TO MAKE AN ILLNESS ... - Invest in ME

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credibility that should be easily understood. There are diagnostic criteria that enable clinicians to diagnose
(ME)CFS in the primary care setting”.
The full Press Conference is available at: http://web.archive.org/web/20080505120858/http://
www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/transcripts/t061103.htm?id=36410
Despite repeated international calls for biomedical research and for appropriate investigations of patients
with ME/CFS, including more accurate subgrouping of those with “CFS”, influenced by the Wessely School,
the Medical Research Council maintains its psychiatric bias. From its own website, it is clear that
approximately 91% of the MRC’s total grant‐spend on ME/CFS in the five years from May 2003 has gone on
psychiatric trials of behavioural interventions carried out by the Wessely School themselves. Furthermore,
the MRC is known to have turned down no less than 33 biomedical and pathophysiological research projects
on ME/CFS.
Wessely School psychiatrists have continued to publish studies on “CFS”, the results of which do not accord
with existing biomedical science, for example: “It has been argued that perceived functional incapacity might be a
primary characteristic of CFS. (Our) sample consisted of 73 patients with a diagnosis of CFS according to the Oxford
criteria randomly selected from clinics in the Departments of Immunology and Psychiatry at St Bartholomew’s
Hospital, London. The findings suggest that perceived functional incapacity is a primary characteristic of CFS”
(Priebe S et al. Psychopathology 2008:41(6):339‐345).
To refer to “perceived incapacity” in these patients is not only offensive to patients but is also an insult to
the many clinicians and researchers who have uncovered the reality of the incapacity through the
scientific process (in which psychiatry plays no part).
The assumption by the Wessely School that CFS/
ME is a “faulty belief system” that can be “corrected” by CBT and incremental aerobic exercise is
fallacious. The reality is that more than one UK Coroner (and
many more internationally) has accepted ME/CFS as a cause of death, and the diagnosis appears on death
certificates.
No‐one who is aware of this wealth of information can credibly doubt the reality, the validity and the
devastation of this organic multi‐system disease.
Documented International Concerns about CBT/GET for patients with ME/CFS
No consideration seems to have been given by the PACE Trial Principal Investigators ‐‐‐ nor indeed by the
West Midlands Multi‐centre Research Ethics Committee ‐‐‐ to the documented international concerns about
CBT/GET for ME/CFS patients, for example:
United States:
“Our reluctance to endorse graded activity arises from our vastly different clinical experience in the US” (Friedberg
F, Jason LA. American Psychological Association, Washington, 1998).
“Our clinical experience suggests that graded exercise / CBT for clients who do not exhibit fear‐
based avoidance may be counter‐productive and trigger symptom flare‐ups” (Fred Friedberg, Leonard A
Jason, J Clin Psychol 2001:67:433‐455).
Four US experts in ME/CFS are on record about the British approach to CBT:
“One of the most controversial treatments for ME/CFS is cognitive behavioural therapy. Some patients are fiercely opposed
to it because they believe it suggests that if they’d just change their behaviour or their attitudes about the
illness, they would get better. This opposition has been strengthened by the British approach to CBT”.