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

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Masters in medical statistics, which led to being part of a team at the London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine that applied statistical expertise to research.
Together with Professor Colin Blakemore, she is a former member of the Mobile Telecommunications and
Health Research Programme.
She has now moved into the field of mental health; she was Director of the National Forensic Mental Health
Research and Development Programme for the Department of Health and is Chair and Trustee of the
charity Mental Health Research UK, a charity which she helped to set up.
She is a Trustee of the Lloyds TSB Foundation and is a Deputy Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire.
There is, however, one milestone that seems not to feature prominently in her prestigious CV, and that is her
1990 Chilvers Report (Survival of patients with breast cancer attending the Bristol Cancer Help Centre.
Chilvers C, McElwain T et al. Lancet 1990:336:8715:606‐610). One of her co‐authors, Professor Tim
McElwain from the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital, was a founder member of
HealthWatch (then called the Campaign Against Health Fraud), a UK organisation ‐‐ now a charity ‐‐ that
was known for its zealous antagonism towards alternative and complementary medicine. HealthWatch
literature proclaims that its aims are “to oppose…unnecessary treatment for non‐existent diseases” and the same
document lists Simon Wessely as a “leading member of the campaign” who, as noted above, is on record as
regarding ME as a “non‐existent disease”. HealthWatch is a campaigning organisation that has accepted
funding from the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries (for more details, see
http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/CONCEPTS_OF_ACCOUNTABILITY.htm).
The Chilvers Report concluded that those women with breast cancer who sought help from the Bristol
Cancer Help Centre (BCHC) were more likely to die than those who did not. This finding very nearly
obliterated the BCHC and the staff who supported it but, beleaguered though they were, the staff fought
back with tenacity.
The result was that the Chilvers Report was found to be seriously flawed and was retracted by the authors
(Lancet: 1990:336:8724:1185‐1188).
There are, of course, other “big names” involved with the PACE Trial.
The question to be asked is simple: how can such undoubtedly distinguished academics and clinicians
not have been aware of the controversy engendered by the Wessely School about ME/CFS?
How could they not be aware of the evidence set out in Section 2 above that was published at the time?
How could they not be aware of their ethical responsibilities?
Are all these people guilty of a dereliction of duty in that they seem not to have put the best interest of
patients with ME/CFS above the interests of the PACE Trial Investigators?
Were they simply misled by Professor White? Why did they not check for themselves the authenticity of his
beliefs against the available science?
Had they done so, they might have seen that the Wessely School, for example:
• have significant financial conflicts of interest
• have used entry criteria for the PACE Trial that do not define the patient population they purport
to be studying