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

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There was no acknowledgement from either the MRC BSU or from Dr Johnson; however just after the letters
had been sent to the MRC, it was observed that much of Dr Johnson’s Report had been removed from the
MRC BSU website, indicating that this was a matter of some importance to the MRC.
In statistical terms, the deletions from Dr Johnson’s Report amounted to a substantial 42% of the entire
Report.
Almost a full month later, a letter dated 10 th October 2006 was received from Dr Anthony Peatfield, which
said: “You refer to some text that was recently published on the website of the MRC Biostatistics Unit. The comments
to which you refer were drawn from a progress report produced by an individual member of staff. The comments have
now been removed from the website. I would like to take this opportunity to apologise, on behalf of the MRC, for
any offence these comments may have caused either to yourself or any other individual. While the comments were ill‐
judged, it was not the intention of the individual who wrote them, nor the Unit in publishing them, to cause offence”.
Curiously, Dr Peatfield further advised that should anyone else contact the MRC about this same matter:
“we shall reply to any further requests such as your own as indicated in the third paragraph, above”, meaning that he
would simply offer an ‘apology’ regardless of what information or clarification was being requested.
Peatfield’s reply implied that those damaging comments were not made by anyone of significance at the
MRC, when in fact they had been written by the Deputy Director of the MRC Biostatistics Unit who was
intrinsically involved with the actual design of the PACE trial, namely Dr Tony Johnson.
Out of ten Reports that constituted the Quinquennial Review, the only individual report from which
sections were removed, including the Abstract, is that of Dr Johnson.
The Abstract could not, however, be removed from the Review Index, where all ten Abstracts by different
individuals are located, with links to their full documents. In the case of Dr Johnson’s “re‐edited”
document, the link to the Abstract no longer works, but the link works for all the other Abstracts. Was this a
ploy by the MRC to conceal Johnson’s Abstract, with its references to his close association with the Institute
of Psychiatry?
Amongst large amounts of text removed from Dr Johnson’s Report were details of exactly how influential
Dr Johnson has been within the MRC and with the Institute of Psychiatry, particularly in terms of securing
MRC funding, along with other details of his close connections to key individuals involved in the PACE
trial. The following extracts are taken from the Abstract, which was removed in its entirety from the body of
Dr Johnson’s Report:
“Abstract
“I have initiated, developed, and collaborated in both clinical trials and epidemiological studies in four challenging
medical specialties working with a large number of collaborators geographically dispersed throughout UK, Europe, and
beyond. These have resulted in major advances in the understanding of the efficacy of cognitive therapy.
“Over many years my programme has contributed to the successful completion of the three largest clinical trials, all of
major international importance. My programme will be exploited in the future in further collaborations with the
pharmaceutical industry.
“I have enabled a successful collaboration linking the research programmes of this Unit with the MRC Clinical Trials
Unit (MRC CTU) in London, that has resulted in the establishment of a new Clinical Trials Unit dedicated to mental
health and neurological sciences at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. The linkage has enabled my expertise in
clinical trials to be extended to chronic fatigue syndrome and the setting‐up of a major MRC study to evaluate the
efficacy of four different interventions.