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

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segments of the medical establishment have become. When science and rationality are so easily eschewed, you know
what kind of society we are now living in”.
The consequences of opposing Wessely School ideology can be dire. When in January 2006 an organised
peaceful protest was mounted outside a public lecture on Gulf War Syndrome to be given by Professor
Simon Wessely at Gresham College, London, some chilling incidents occurred. One day before the event,
strange things had begun to happen. Staff at Gresham College began telling people that Wessely had
cancelled his lecture. However, other information indicated that Wessely was secretly going ahead. It was
said that Wessely claimed he had reason to believe he would be physically attacked. Total confusion ensued,
with people returning home believing that the lecture had been cancelled, when in reality it was going
ahead. At the event, the police were present and were photographing everyone present. The protest
organisers had learned of Wessely’s public appearance only a week before the event but, on the day, they
managed to display personal stories of people whose lives had been destroyed by Wessely’s ideas: some
were harrowing, describing years of suffering, financial hardship, ridicule and abandonment by the
NHS, family and friends as a result of Wessely’s theories. The protest organisers believed that by
ignoring “the mountains of evidence about the physical causes of these syndromes, (Wessely) and his
colleagues are personally responsible for suffering on a massive scale”, so they had set up a campaign
called “Illness Denied”.
On the day of the protest, the lead protester noticed unusual problems with her mobile phone. She also
experienced problems with computer hacking (which in an official attempt to undermine her mental
stability were ridiculed but which were later validated by an IT expert). The harassment included a threat
placed on the internet directed at her children. She was subsequently arrested, with three police officers, two
doctors, two social workers and a community psychiatric nurse arriving at her home unannounced with a
warrant for her arrest. She was given no time to pack or to get in touch with a lawyer. She was then
detained against her will under Section Two of the Mental Health Act 1983. She was kept on Pond Ward of
the Central Middlesex Hospital for 30 days under appalling conditions. While she was under detention, her
mother was suddenly taken ill and died a few days later; the protest organiser had to beg to be allowed out
and was only permitted to see her mother accompanied by an escort in case she “escaped”.
In her “Statement regarding my Detention”, the protest organiser wrote: “I feel that my experience raises
very serious issues about the powers that psychiatrists, social workers, and other authorities have in our
society to repress others on the basis of their political beliefs. It is now clear that there are enough people out
there who do have the courage to face issues even when they are controversial or call into question ideas we take for
granted – that we live in a democracy, that public health authorities always act in our best interests, that governments
are there to protect us, that psychiatrists in the west never diagnose and treat people on the basis of their political
beliefs, that the science of medicine is never subordinated to politics or the profit needs of corporate giants. I believe
that the recent events will only serve to focus people’s minds more than ever on these issues”. The protest organiser
was fortunate to have been supported by informed doctors, scientists, journalists, a peer of the realm and a
very sharp, hard‐hitting team of solicitors
(http://web.archive.org/web/20070928204222/http://www.lyme‐rage.info/elena/statejun06.html ).
The above episode seems to have overtones of how Russia used to silence dissidents by giving them a
psychiatric diagnosis and committing them to an institution, a situation that seems not to have disappeared
in current times.
In The Daily Telegraph on 13 th August 2007, Adrian Blomfield’s article “Labelled mad for daring to criticise
the Kremlin” told a harrowing tale of “punitive psychiatry” and referred to “state psychiatrists”: “The Daily
Telegraph has learnt of dozens of incidents that suggest that Russia’s psychiatric system is rapidly becoming as
unsavoury as it was in Soviet times”. Blomfield wrote:“ ‘Once again psychiatrists see stubbornness in an individual
as a sign of psychosis’ said Lyubov Vinogradova, the executive director of the Independent Psychiatrists’ Association.
‘If a person goes to court against a state institution or writes letters of complaint he is treated as a social
danger and is in danger of incarceration’ ”.