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

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There are many who would profoundly disagree that the Wessely School work together in the best
interests of their patients.
Following another Woodstock conference in 2003, a book entitled “Malingering and Illness Deception” was
published by Oxford University Press that year. It was edited by Peter Halligan, Christopher Bass and
David Oakley. Simon Wessely contributed chapter 2 and Michael Sharpe contributed chapter 12.
It received rave reviews. One review (J R Coll Physicians Edinb 2005:35:126‐127) containing the words
“imposters” and “invention” by former Postgraduate Dean and Professor of Clinical Medicine RA Wood is
glowing: “GPs and hospital doctors recognise that patients tend to downplay their symptoms and cope remarkably
well with disability, adjusting in a determined way and being positive.
“There are also those, for example with ME, where the objective disablement is often less than the
subjective assessment of the situation. But, in general, our interactions with patients are with people who
are honest about their complaints and who are anxious to resume normal working, domestic and leisure
activities as soon as possible.
“It is timely that there should now be a truly readable book which looks at the way in which patients misrepresent their
illnesses. This 370 page paperback is a compilation of fully referenced papers given by a miscellany of most eminent
contributors.
“Doctors in so‐called advanced countries with benefits systems have simply got to get used to the truths and fictions
that are discussed in this very important book. This book should be read by medical students (and) it is
compulsory reading for any doctor writing a report for a legal purpose or providing certification of benefits.
The good news is that the conference from which it came was sponsored by the Department of Work and Pensions.
“A decent sized chunk of our GNP (gross national product) is being sidelined into unjustifiable benefits, premature
retirements (and) insurance costs.
“We as doctors are best placed to derail this gravy train.
“Several Benefits Agencies are no longer reluctant to obtain video evidence of the capacities of claimants.
“Doctors who have read this valuable book will help patients who will otherwise come to sacrifice their
useful lives to imaginary disability”.
Whilst no right‐minded person objects to stringent measures being employed to identify benefit fraud,
to include ME/CFS as one of the targeted “illness deceptions” and to describe it as “an imaginary
disability” is preposterous.
Rutherford’s quotations mentioned above come from the book by Professors Gordon Waddell and Mansel
Aylward (The Scientific and Conceptual Basis of Incapacity Benefits, TSO, 2005, published following the
Woodstock Conference that was funded by the DWP).
Parts of the 2005 book seem to have been cut and pasted from a book published the previous year by
Professors Gordon Waddell and Kim Burton (“Concepts of Rehabilitation for the Management of Common
Health Problems”, TSO, 2004). This book was commissioned by the Corporate Medical Group of the UK
DWP and acknowledges the work of prominent Wessely School members, including Mansel Aylward,
Derick Wade, Peter White and Simon Wessely himself.
In the 2004 book, CFS is referred to by Waddell and Burton as a “common mental health problem”.