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

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At the press release to launch the joint Royal Collegesʹ 1996 report, Dr Robert Kendell, then President of the
Royal College of Psychiatrists, was quoted as saying ʺTo try to distinguish between a physical illness and a
psychological illness is not just wrong, itʹs meaninglessʺ (Press Launch, Royal College of Physicians, London,
2nd October 1996); this fallacy was encapsulated in a letter to the Guardian newspaper which said: ʺTry
telling that to someone with terminal cancerʺ (Letter: H.J.H.Berger, Guardian, 5th October 1996, page 16).
White’s BNA presentation continued: “Fatigue …should be differentiated from fatiguability. Fatiguability…is
commonly reported with neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis and myopathies”. Ironically, White seems
unaware that the Wessely School’s 1991 Oxford criteria (with which he was involved, not least as a financial
sponsor) specifically exclude this cardinal symptom of ME/CFS from their case definition of “CFS”, thereby
rendering it scientifically meaningless for them to claim that ME is included in their Oxford case definition.
The unwarranted influence of this group of activist psychiatrists is a grave matter; they are often funded by
the taxpayer as well as by charities such as the Linbury Trust, which has funded the Wessely School’s
studies of “chronic fatigue” since 1991.
The Linbury Trust is one of the Sainsbury supermarket family trusts: by 2003 David Sainsbury had donated
over £11 million to the UK Labour Party and in the Blair New Labour Government he was promoted to the
House of Lords (he is now Lord Sainsbury of Turville) and became Minister for Science. As such, he was
responsible for the Office of Science and Technology as well as for the chemical and biotechnology
industries, and for the Research Councils, including the Medical Research Council.
The Office of Science and Technology monitors all government funding of research grants and controls
official science policy, and it is “policy” which determines the research to be funded: on 11 th May 2000, the
Secretary of State for Health (Yvette Cooper MP) confirmed “The Department funds research to support
policy” (Hansard, 11 th May 2000:461W 462W).
On 22 nd June 2005 Laurie Taylor presented a programme called “Thinking Allowed” on BBC Radio 4, one of
a series of programmes in which contributors discuss topical items coming out of the academic and research
worlds. Taylor ended that particular programme with an explosion: “….the last word on methodology….must
go to the anonymous political insider who recently characterised the present Government’s approach to research in the
following manner: it is not, he said, so much evidence‐based policy‐making as policy‐based evidence‐
making”. Never was there a truer word, as the ME community knows to its considerable cost: it has been
saying so for many years but has been systematically denigrated and ignored.
That quotation is momentous because it exactly encapsulates the reality: it seems that forces intent on
“eradicating” ME (and even removing those few medical stalwarts who support ME patients) are at work
that defy belief.
Physicians who genuinely try to help those with ME are themselves victimised, in some cases being
reported to the General Medical Council (as, for example, was Dr Gordon Skinner over his treatment of
thyroid problems in some patients with ME, a problem whose existence certain UK “experts” refuse to
acknowledge, and Dr Sarah Myhill, who was stopped from successfully treating ME/CFS according to her
clinical expertise and who was falsely accused of medical malpractice – a charge that was subsequently
withdrawn).
This “policy‐based evidence‐
making” has now reached such an extent that it has been likened to a cancerous
metastatic spread (Stephen Ralph, 25 th June 2005: http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/
MEActionUK/). There could hardly be a better analogy: metastatic spread takes hold by replicating
itself until it eventually dominates and
overwhelms, just as the unsubstantiated views about ME of the Wessely School psychiatrists have spread
throughout the medical profession, the media (perhaps through the activities of the Science Media Centre,
where Simon Wessely is on the Scientific Advisory Panel), Government, and even some of the patients’
support organisations.