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

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ME/CFS have reduced blood volume, so as the total blood volume and the total red cells are both low, the
results appear “normal”, yet the patients may be functionally very anaemic. The study authors note: “the
elevated prevalence of low red blood cell volume suggests that the (ME)CFS subjects may have an anaemia type that
goes undetected by standard haematological evaluations” (Clin Sci (Lond) May 26, 2009; http://www.clinsci.org/).
The Wessely School, however, prefer to focus only on “normal” results, since if they conceded that there are
measurable and reproducible abnormalities in ME/CFS patients, not only their psychosocial model of
“CFS/ME” as a “functional somatic syndrome” but also their careers, their influential status as Government
and insurance industry advisors and their reputations might be at risk.
Therefore, as Australian ME/CFS sufferer Susanna Agardy points out, rigorous diagnostic testing is being
displaced by the “biopsychosocial” model in which the “bio” is usually ignored ‐‐ Wessely School
psychiatrists insist that certain physical symptoms must be psychogenic: “Their insistence on their confined
terms of reference is breathtaking. They tend to go round and round finding confirmation of their beliefs
without ever examining whether their whole paradigm might be out of touch with reality. Apparently
living in a separate bubble of their own making, they ignore all evidence which might contradict their
position…money is spent on researching ‘biopsychosocial’ explanations which are facile, simplistic and
mostly make the wrong assumptions” (Co‐Cure ACT: 4 th August 2009).
Despite the extensive evidence‐base that ME/CFS is a serious multi‐system organic disease, the
anticipated impact of the PACE Trial which recruited participants on the basis of broad “fatigue” is that
the findings will be used to justify the continued use of behavioural interventions in clinical practice
throughout the UK ‐‐ and probably internationally ‐‐ for people with ME/CFS.
There may, however, be a glimmer of hope: at the MRC Workshop on CFS/ME held on 19 th / 20 th November
2009 at Heythrop Park, Oxfordshire, in his introduction Professor Stephen Holgate said, in effect, that the
reason for the meeting was the need to move forward, to get away from old models and to use proper
science, and that there was no reason not to change things, a view he had also expressed at the RSM
meeting “Medicine and me” on 11 th July 2009.
The question is ‐‐ will the results of the MRC PACE Trial and the vested interests of the Wessely School ever
permit the getting away from “old models”?
On 15 th December 2009 the Daily Mail reported the words of Sir Ken Macdonnell QC, a former Director of
Public Prosecutions: “Self‐belief is no answer to misjudgment”. Those words were said of former Prime
Minister Tony Blair about his decision to go to war in Iraq on the basis of no actual evidence of weapons of
mass destruction (WMD).
Could they equally apply to the apparent self‐belief and misjudgment of the PACE Trial Investigators about
ME/CFS?
In an article on 2 nd November 2004 entitled “M.E. and Political Conflict”, William Baylis wrote:
“Though it is nominally a research trial into M.E., the Medical Research Council’s current ‘PACE’ trial has been very
cleverly designed to exclude most true M.E. sufferers and include sufferers of mental illness. As such, the trial is a
deceitful national scandal and a gross abuse of tax payers’ money. When the skewed results of this trial begin to
be used by Government, the NHS and the DWP, M.E. sufferers should be under no illusions as to what it will mean.
They will face forced and increasing physical exercise programmes at the hands of psychiatrists in the twelve new
regional ‘M.E. Treatment Centres’. Patients’ negative responses to such programmes will be viewed by these
psychiatrists as evidence of mental illness – thereby presenting an appalling no‐win situation to physically vulnerable
people. There is now much international research evidence demonstrating why patients with M.E. (ICD‐10 G93.3)
will respond negatively…However, these Wessely School psychiatrists ignore such hard evidence because they are
working to their own corporate‐backed agenda. In opposition to good science they simply assert that M.E. is not a real