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

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yet ME does not exist ‐‐ Professor Wessely and his acolytes say so, and the MRC apparently accepts the
Wessely School’s beliefs.
Commenting on the tragic case of Pamela Weston (an ME sufferer who committed suicide at the Dignitas
clinic in Switzerland), on 27 th September 2009 Dr Matthew Harris from Exeter wrote in The Times online:
“The assertion ‘many doctors believe ME has a psychological rather than a physical cause’ contradicts the Royal
College of General Practitioners, which reclassified ME as a physical illness in August 2008. The statement may be
re‐phrased to say a minority of psychiatrists think ME is psychological. In fact, many doctors are hoping that
the NICE guidelines will be amended to reflect the current understanding of ME as physical in origin and
physiological in its development, so as to provide a more practical model for general practice”.
According to Professor Martin Pall, the PACE Trial is predicated on three obvious failures: (i) the
psychogenic advocates fail to explain the vast amount of genuine pathophysiological changes found in
sufferers of ME/CFS; (ii) the “biopsychosocial” construct is built on ignorance and its whole basis has no
foundation and (iii) the Wessely School’s claims that ME/CFS is a functional somatic syndrome are specious
because there are biomedical explanations for the protean symptoms of ME/CFS.
It should not be forgotten that one of the PACE Trial’s Principal Investigators, Professor Michael Sharpe,
is on record thus: “Purchasers and Health Care providers with hard pressed budgets are understandably
reluctant to spend money on patients for whom there is controversy about the ‘reality’ of their condition
(and who) are in this sense undeserving of treatment…Those who cannot be fitted into a scheme of objective
bodily illness yet refuse to be placed into and accept the stigma of mental illness remain the undeserving
sick of our society and our health service” (ME: What do we know: real illness or all in the mind? Lecture
given by Michael Sharpe in October 1999, hosted by the University of Strathclyde).
No matter what the latest UK Government policy happens to be, given the body of biomedical evidence
that exists about ME/CFS, for the MRC to fund out of taxpayers’ money trials that appear to have no
scientific integrity or value seems indefensible.
UK/US Interactions
In the US ME/CFS was designated by the Centres for Disease Control as “A serious legitimate diagnosis
CDC Priority 1 Disease of Public Health importance”, not as a behavioural disorder as in the UK.
However, it seems that it is no longer categorised thus, and that the Wessely School has set out to change
that previous situation in the US in order to bring it in line with the situation in the UK, aiming at an
“international consensus” about how “CFS/ME” should be managed.
The Minutes of the Health & Human Services CFS Advisory Committee meeting on 27 th and 28 th May 2009
held in Washington DC record that Dr William Reeves of the CDC said that the CDC wanted to get together
an international workshop on “CFS” by winter 2009: “We want to include countries such as the UK that
have CFS care completely integrated into their healthcare system….The collaboration with Peter White is
largely because Peter White came to us when the National Health Service in the UK was trying to design its
programme and formulate recommendations about what the health service in the UK should do…and we
collaborate with Dr White on the PACE Trial. An international meeting provides the chance to learn from
another government that has embraced this illness”.
The Chair of the CFS Advisory Committee, Dr Oleske, responded: “I have to say that I think there are times
when the domestic agenda suffers at the behest of an international agenda” and a member of the CFS
Advisory Committee (Ms Artman) said that when she had contacted those who participated in the CDC
stakeholder meeting, “Just about everyone came back with comments about either Simon Wessely or Peter