Journal of IiME Volume 6 Issue 1 (June 2012) October 2011:6:10:e26358), Professor Klimas said: “Many clinicians fail to realise the severity of the illness that has been termed ME/CFS. This is a profoundly ill population” (http://bergento.no/the-mecfs-study-by-mellaand-fluge-is-a-key-study-for-our-field ). The situation in the UK is a travesty of both medical science and human rights; things have become so serious and patients with ME/CFS in the UK are so neglected – indeed, they are treated with undisguised contempt and are abused by those working in the very system that is designed to support them -- that discussions are taking place concerning the European Commission on Human Rights, as the Human Rights Act is intended to protect people from neglect and abuse, whatever the source. In summary, reproducible laboratory immunological abnormalities in ME/CFS include very low numbers of NK cells, with decreased cytolytic activity; circulating immune complexes (two-thirds of ME patients have circulating immune complexes, which are insoluble and can remain trapped in blood vessels and tissues); autoantibodies, especially antinuclear and smooth muscle; increased T4:T8 ratio facilitating allergies and hypersensitivities (which always corresponds with disease severity); abnormal SIgA; positive IgG3 (linked to gastrointestinal tract disorders); positive IgM (in his Medical Address at the AGM of the ME Association on 25th April 1987, James Mowbray, Professor of Immunopathology, St Mary’s Hospital Medical School, London, said: “If someone has IgM antibodies they have either been recently infected or they are still infected”); and a particular HLA antigen expression. Given the extent of the Wessely School’s involvement with (and influence over) State policy for ME/CFS, it is notable that, on his own admission, Professor Wessely does not understand immunology. On 10th August 2004 in his evidence to the Lord Lloyd of Berwick Independent Inquiry into Gulf War Illnesses, when discussing immunology and the shift from Th1 to Th2 (as has been shown to occur in ME/CFS also), Wessely said: “Now, please do not ask me what that means because I do not really know. A man has got to know his limitations and my limitations are Invest in ME (Charity Nr. 1114035) immunology” (www.lloydgwii.com/admin/ManagedFiles/2/GWI1008%2000. doc). It must also be recalled that the 1996 Joint Royal Colleges’ Report on CFS (in which Wessely School members were instrumental) specifically recommended that no investigations should be performed to confirm the diagnosis (page 45) and that immunological abnormalities “should not focus attention…towards a search for an ‘organic’ cause” (page 13), or that Wessely advises that “Unhelpful and inaccurate beliefs about CFS include the following…CFS is due to a persistent virus or…immune disorder” (Update, 20th May 1998:1016-1026). Documented immune system abnormalities in ME/CFS There is an extensive and significant published evidence-base of reproducible immune dysfunction in ME/CFS. All are important, as they show that for the last 30 years immunological problems have been known to underpin ME/CFS. (Note that for reasons of space, extracts are sometimes sequentially condensed). It must be remembered that there are equally undeniable evidence-bases on the documented abnormalities observed in the neurological system (central, autonomic and peripheral, including vestibular dysfunction), as well as in the endocrinological, cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, respiratory, gastro-intestinal and ocular systems, and also on the cognitive impairment that has been shown in ME/CFS; on the proven abnormalities that have been repeatedly demonstrated on nuclear medicine imaging, and in the abnormal gene expression in ME/CFS patients (indeed, one senior research scientist has stated that there are more abnormal genes in ME/CFS than in cancer). Given the extracts below, readers may be shocked to learn that in 2012 in the UK, influenced by the Wessely School, immune system investigation of people with ME/CFS remains proscribed by NICE (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, to whose nominally “advisory” Guidelines clinicians are required to adhere on pain of losing their registration to practise medicine), and the only www.investinme.org Page 31 of 108
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