Journal of IiME Volume 6 Issue 1 (June 2012) to favour deliberately deceiving patients: “The term ‘functional’ has increasingly come to mean ‘hysterical’…The DSM-V working group (which includes Professor Michael Sharpe from the UK, a prominent member of the Wessely School) proposes to use ‘functional’ as the official diagnostic term for medically unexplained neurological symptoms (currently known as ‘conversion disorder’)….Interviewing the neurologists in a large UK region and then surveying all neurologists in the UK on their use of the term, (the interviews) revealed four dominant uses – ‘not organic’; a physical disability; a brain disorder and a psychiatric problem – as well as considerable ambiguity….The ambiguity was seen as useful when engaging with patients. The survey (found) a majority adhering to a strict interpretation of ‘functional’ to mean only ‘not organic’…. ‘Functional’ can, for example, be used to mean a disturbance of bodily function or it can be used to denote conversion disorder; and by telling a patient they have a ‘functional disorder’ they may encourage them to contemplate the former meaning, without being aware of the latter … There is a divergence between the terms neurologists use medically and with lay people. One advantage of ‘functional’ (allows) neurologists to use the same term to mean one thing to colleagues and another to patients….Its diversity of meaning allows it to be a common term while meaning different things to different people….and thus conceal some of the conflict in a particularly contentious area” (JNNP 2012 Mar;83(3):248-250). Further muddying the waters is the fact that the Wessely School use their own case definition of “CFS” (the “Oxford” criteria: JRSM 1991:84:118121) and they intentionally include within their terms “CFS” or “CFS/ME” those with chronic “fatigue” or on-going tiredness. Indeed, in the notorious £5 million PACE Trial, the Chief Principal Investigator, Professor Peter White (another prominent Wessely School member), stated at section 3.6 of the Trial Identifier: “Subjects will be required to meet operationalised Oxford criteria for CFS. This means six months or more of medically unexplained, severe, disabling fatigue affecting physical and mental functions. We chose these broad criteria in order to enhance generalisability and recruitment”. Deliberately to broaden entry criteria for a clinical trial purporting to be looking at people with ME whilst including Invest in ME (Charity Nr. 1114035) patients who do not have the disorder in question would seem to contravene elementary rules of scientific procedure. The Wessely School have for decades dismissed the need to sub-group “CFS”: the UK Chief Medical Officer’s Working Group 2002 Report (Annex 4: section 3) with which they were involved asserts that sub-grouping “may be considered a matter of semantics and personal philosophy”, but biomedical experts have long called for subgrouping in order to better understand the pathophysiology and to more effectively direct therapeutic interventions, since it has been shown that ME/CFS patients with a particular immune dysfunction do not respond favourably to exercise. Given the extent of the international peerreviewed published evidence that proves these psychiatrists to be wrong, it is reprehensible that the medical journals for which they serve as peerreviewers and the agencies of State to which they are advisors continue to permit their disproven beliefs about ME/CFS to remain unchallenged, with the result that patients with ME/CFS continue to suffer iatrogenic harm. It was eighteen years ago that Professor Paul Levine from the Division of Cancer Aetiology, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, pointed out that: “In the study of a complex illness such as (ME)CFS, the most important aspect is case definition….The spectrum of illnesses associated with a dysregulated immune system now must include (ME)CFS” (Paul H Levine. Clin Inf Dis 1994:18 (Suppl 1):S57-S60). In October 2009, Nancy Klimas, Professor of Medicine and Immunology, (then at the University of Miami) and one of the world’s foremost AIDS and ME/CFS researchers said: “I hope you are not saying that (ME)CFS patients are not as ill as HIV patients. I split my clinical time between the two illnesses, and I can tell you that if I had to choose between the two illnesses I would rather have HIV” (New York Times, 15th October 2009). In the autumn of 2011, commenting on and supporting the Norwegian study by Drs Fluge and Mella that used the anti-cancer drug Rituximab with good effect in ME/CFS patients (PloS ONE www.investinme.org Page 30 of 108
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