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

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“These patients want a medical diagnosis for a number of reasons. First, it allows them to negotiate
reduced demands and increased care from family, friends and employer (Sharpe does not consider the plight
of people with ME/CFS who have no family and who have lost their friends because of the destructive
impact of the disorder). Second, it may open the way for practical help in terms of financial and other
benefits from government, employers and insurers” (Gen Hosp Psychiat 1998:20:335‐338).
“My own view has long been that the issues around CFS/ME are the same as those surrounding the
acceptance and management of (patients) who suffer conditions that are not dignified by the presence of
what we call disease” (Ann Intern Med 2001:134:9:2:926‐930).
“Factors such as immunological abnormalities are not of clinical value” (BMJ 2002:325:480‐483).
World experts in ME/CFS have proved Sharpe to be comprehensively wrong – see below.
Professor Trudie Chalder has fixed ideas about “CFS/ME” that seem not to be informed by the biomedical
evidence: “So what is fatigue…it is a subjective symptom… best viewed on a continuum. Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome… is characterised by profound, incapacitating chronic fatigue, which is unexplained by physical or mental
illness…There is considerable controversy about the nature of the syndrome, i.e. whether it is best understood and
managed within a medical or psychiatric framework…There is often a mismatch between patients’ experience and
health professionals’ perspective…CFS patients have more unhelpful beliefs about experiencing and expressing
negative emotions than controls…In summary it appears that patients with CFS have some difficulty
regulating their emotions” (The Importance of Psycho‐social Aspects in Developing Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome:
http://www.rikshospitalet.no/iKnowBase/Content/434520/Chalder‐Psychosocial‐aspects‐of CFS.pdf).
Professor Chalder seems to believe that CBT is a cure‐all. For example, she believes that CBT has a role to
play in the control of diabetes: CBT “is showing promise in more unlikely fields. Several studies have shown that it
can improve the prognosis for some cancers and this week, Professor Trudie Chalder, of King’s College, London,
announced that it can help people with type I diabetes. Though her study has not yet been peer‐reviewed or published,
Professor Chalder described the results as positive” (The Times, 15 th September 2007).
Fourteen months later, the study was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (Ann Int Med
2008:149:708‐719). However, the “Summaries for Patients” in the same journal says: “The researchers assigned
patients to receive either Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET), Motivational Enhancement Therapy plus
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), or usual care. No patient received only CBT, so this study was unable to
determine the effect of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy alone”.
Professor Chalder’s beliefs about “CFS/ME” are unambiguous: in 2007 the newly convened Biomedical
Research Unit at the Institute of Psychiatry funded a project called “Emotional Processing in Psychosomatic
Disorders”. The Section of General Hospital Psychiatry at the IoP advertised for a psychology graduate to
work on the project, which would “involve working across the Section on Eating Disorders and the Chronic
Fatigue Research and Treatment Unit”. The closing date for applications was 13 th July 2007. The job reference
was 07/R68. The advertisement said: “The post holder will work under the immediate supervision of
Professors Ulrike Schmidt (AN) and Trudie Chalder (CFS)”.
The study literature stated: “The comparison with CFS will allow (researchers) to gauge whether any social
cognition deficits are unique to anorexia, or reflect more global symptoms of psychiatric illness with marked physical
symptoms”. So there it is in black and white: according to one of the MRC PACE Trial Principal Investigators,
“CFS” is “a psychiatric illness with marked physical symptoms”. Applicants were informed that: “Aberrant
emotional processing is a strong candidate as a maintaining factor for these disorders” and the background
to the project stated: “Anorexia Nervosa (AN) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) are classical
psychosomatic disorders where response to social threat is expressed somatically”.