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

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From these beliefs of the PACE Trial’s Chief Investigator, it seems unlikely that the Trial includes people
with discrete ME, despite the Investigators’ assertions that the PACE Trial does include them.
The Trial is using the Oxford criteria which do not define patients with ME/CFS. The Trial’s “operationalised
Oxford research diagnostic criteria for CFS” (Trial Protocol version 5, 2006, Section 7.2) were partly financed by
Peter White’s own money (JRSM 1991:84:118‐121), which perhaps demonstrates an unusual level of personal
interest in “CFS/ME”.
As William Epstein makes plain, studies reporting gains from behavioural interventions relied on patient
self‐reports in situations that probably encouraged exaggerated reports of progress, as the studies were
conducted by researchers with an apparent stake in the behavioural interventions they were evaluating
(Psychotherapy as Religion [chapter 5], University of Nevada Press, Reno, Nevada, 2006).
Peter White is known for his published belief that: “some people believe that medicine is currently travelling up a
‘blind alley’ (and) that this ‘blind alley’ is the biomedical approach to healthcare. The biomedical model assumes that
ill‐health and disability is directly caused by diseases and their pathological processes (but) there is an alternative
approach – the biopsychosocial approach is one that incorporates thoughts, feelings, behaviour, their social context and
their interactions with pathophysiology” (Biopsychosocial Medicine. An integrated approach to understanding
illness. OUP 2005. Ed. Peter White).
The book arose out of a two‐day conference held at the (pharmaceutical) Novartis Foundation in London on
31 st October and 1 st November 2002, being a joint venture between the Novartis Foundation and a body
called One‐Health, said to be a not‐for‐profit company that (quote) “was established in order to promote a
system of healthcare based on the biopsychosocial model of ill‐health”.
Peter White is Chairman of One‐Health and his fellow Directors include Professor Trudie Chalder.
Many people believe that it is a retrograde step to reject the hard‐earned scientific evidence ‐‐ gained over
centuries ‐‐ that ill‐health is directly caused by disease and its pathological processes and to retreat into the
blind alley of ascribing illness to “aberrant” beliefs instead of to pathogens.
There is a long history of the biopsychosocial model of disease being discarded once the evidence is
obtained that disproves it – according to one eminent NHS Consultant Clinician who specialises in ME/CFS,
the psychosocial model is a default posture which some people embrace when they do not know what is
going on or do not understand the science (personal communication).
In 1998 psychiatrist Niall McLaren showed that the biopsychosocial model was a mirage (A critical review
of the biopsychosocial model. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 1998:32:8692) and in his
2002 paper he showed how reliance upon such a non‐existent model is nothing but illusion (The myth of the
biopsychosocial model. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 2002:36:5:701).
McLaren points out that psychiatrists have made a mistake in crediting Engel as author of the
biopsychosocial model of disease, when Engel did not write any such model. All the model consists of is
three words: “The Biopsychosocial Model”.
McLaren notes that psychiatry seems to have mistaken Engel’s call for a more considerate model with an
assumed existence of such a model. To quote McLaren: “Nothing (Engel) wrote constituted a coherent series of
propositions that generated testable predictions relating to the unseen mechanisms by which mind and body interact, ie.
a scientific model for psychiatry”.
Perhaps pertinent to the Wessely School’s apparent unwillingness to heed the biomedical advances in
ME/CFS, McLaren points out that: “preconception, bias and prejudice may determine what we see. In turn,
what we see often serves to inform what we believe. By this means, science can slip into self‐justification”.