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

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On 5 th May 1996, under the headline “Chronic Bandwagon Disease”, CFS was described in the Sunday
Express by Jonathan Miller as “Chronic Fictitious Sickness”.
In February 1999 Adrian Furnham, Professor of Psychology at University College, London, suggested that
there was a wealth of conditions that can be fashionable excuses for lack of success, writing in the Telegraph:
“You are not dim, or work‐shy or lazy. No indeed, you are a chronic sufferer from a recently discovered syndrome!
Indeed, this medical problem can probably account for all the setbacks you have met in life. Chronic fatigue. There is no
cure, although reclining on a sofa watching ‘Richard and Judy’ is said to alleviate the worst symptoms” (This was the
subject of a complaint to the British Psychological Society, who decided that Professor Furnham had not
committed any form of professional misconduct).
In 2000, “Doctor” magazine ran a quiz by Dr Tony Copperfield (known to be the pseudonym of a GP in
Essex) in which GPs were asked to choose from four possible answers to the question “What would be your
initial response to a patient presenting with a self‐diagnosis of ME?” The correct answer was “For God’s sake pull
yourself together, you piece of pond life”. (This was the subject of a complaint to the General Medical Council).
On 23 rd March 2001 in “GP” magazine Dr Marko Boganovic, a psychiatrist and research registrar, Merton
College, Oxford, wrote about patients with CFS/ME: “The provision of disability services and benefit payment is
controversial because illness beliefs may be reinforced (and) services and benefits constitute secondary gain”.
The issue of “secondary gain” is important. It is an often‐repeated assertion by the Wessely School for which
not a shred of evidence exists. Patients are desperate to get better and to resume their former lives and their
independence. What “secondary gain” can possibly compensate for the loss of health, employment, financial
security, social life and – far too often – the loss of home, partner, family and friends? If “adopting the sick
role” and “symptom amplification” bring people with ME/CFS to the point of such despair that they consider
or commit suicide, how can it be thought to be “rewarding”? The psychiatric lobby persistently fails to
address this issue: at a conference held in London on 31 st October and 1 st November 2002 on the
biopsychosocial model of illness, the question of secondary gain was raised, and Professor Michael Von
Korff said: “If we start with the assumption that (ME/CFS) patients are motivated largely by secondary gain….”.
To depend on such an assumption defies logic, so the question therefore needs to be repeated: where are the
published studies which demonstrate that such patients obtain secondary gain? As Von Korff made plain,
the psychiatrists’ view is an assumption ‐‐ with reputations and careers being built on it ‐‐ but assumptions
are hardly “evidence‐based medicine” upon which Wessely et al purport to place such store (for a detailed
report, see www.meactionuk.org.uk/PROOF_POSITIVE.htm ).
On 20 th October 2001 “Pulse” ran a series called “Choices for the new generation of GPs”. The approach
provided by Dr Mary Church (a Principal in a practice in Blantyre, Scotland and a member of the British
Medical Association medical ethics committee) was particularly contemptuous but is not untypical: “Never
let patients know you think ME doesn’t exist and is a disease of malingerers. Never advise an ME patient to make a
review appointment”.
As noted above, early in 2002, at Wessely’s instigation the BMJ ran a ballot asking doctors to vote on what
they considered to be “non‐diseases” that are best left medically untreated and Wessely is believed to have
proposed ME. Along with freckles and big ears, ME was voted a “non‐disease” and in April 2002 both
broadsheet and tabloid newspapers ran banner headlines proclaiming that ME is a non‐disease.
In March 2005, Dr Mike Jones, (Senior Physician at Edinburgh International Health Centre and Associate
Specialist, Regional Infectious Diseases Unit, Western General Hospital), writing about Voluntary Agencies
Medical Advisors, stated: “In at least some cases of CFS, and possibly most, there are psychological factors….
Occasionally CFS is a clear benefit to the CFS patient in preventing the agency from posting the person to a location to
which they do not want to go. Rational discussion …is often hampered by a polarisation by those who dislike