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

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impinge upon medical decisions and health service provision…Science in general and psychiatry in particular needs to
be independent from contemporary sociological and political contexts”.
Noting that well‐developed ethical principles did not stop the trespassing of political ideology into clinical
practice and research in the 1930s, Strous concluded: “A dark side to medicine exists: psychiatry, academia, and
science played a key role in the establishment of National Socialism and all that ensued (see Section 1 above). The
experience of psychiatry during the Nazi era provides an example of how science can be perverted by politics and
therefore can become vulnerable to misuse and abuse” and he warns of “the very real dangers of the perversion of
science and clinical management by outside political influences”.
Given that it has been confirmed by the PACE Trial’s Chief Investigator that the aim of the PACE Trial is
“Health economics and societal costs”, is it the case that “outside political influences” are the bedrock of this
particular MRC trial?
It is undeniable that the Wessely School persistently ignore the large body of biomedical evidence that does
not accord with their own beliefs about the nature of ME/CFS, and this is one of the central arguments
against the PACE Trial. Another central argument is the denial of adequate investigations for people with
ME/CFS: if there is no desire to find the cause of a disease, or its cure, then do not look for it; such a stance,
however, is not in the best interests of either medical science or society as a whole.
Since the general body of knowledge known about by other clinicians and researchers working in the
field of ME/CFS is now so great, the question repeatedly asked is: at what point will that body of
scientific knowledge be so great that it will be considered serious professional misconduct to ignore it
and to continue to deceive patients by pretending that it does not exist?
It is important to be aware of the press release from Professor Maes and Frank Twisk that accompanied their
review (referred to above) in which the authors said:
“There is now sufficient evidence that ME/CFS is a disorder that primarily involves an inflammation with
dysregulated and suppressed immune functions, oxidative stress, infections, autoimmunity and mitochondrial
dysfunction. During the last few years, many scientific studies, including gene expression research, have confirmed
that patients with ME/CFS suffer from the above….Despite major scientific breakthroughs, ME/CFS is still described
in the popular media as a medically unexplained disorder. Cognitive behavioural therapy and graded exercise therapy
are declared to be the only possible therapies. A thorough analysis of the current medical (and) scientific literature and
international patient surveys, however, show that CBT/GET is not only ineffective for the majority of ME/CFS
patients, but also potentially very harmful…inflammation, oxidative stress and dysfunctional ion channels will be
amplified by minor exertion and by ‘rehabilitation therapies’ like CBT/GET. The reviewers urge policy makers to
change their policies by putting a stop to potentially harmful and ineffective ‘rehabilitation’ programmes, and investing
into medical research and therapies targeted at the immune system, infections and other pathological aspects of this
disease”
(http://www.ediver.be/ediver/latest%20news/PRESS%20RELEASE%20CBT%20and%20GET%20in%20
ME%20CFS.pdf).
Defiance of science is rewarded in the UK
Many people (including Professor Martin Pall – see above) have openly queried how it is possible for the
Wessely School model of “CFS/ME” to have gained such popularity and even credibility. It is worth re‐
visiting what Pall said in his book “Explaining ‘Unexplained Illnesses’ “:
“One of the great puzzles about the psychogenic literature regarding these multisystem illnesses is how do
so many bad papers get published? How do so many papers dominated by emotion laden phrases, by
transparent falsehoods, by logical flaws, by overstated claims and by unsupported or poorly supported