Journal of IiME Volume 6 Issue 1 (June 2012) reviewed medical journal….Why is anyone listening to self-proclaimed experts who have direct connections with corporate entities that only wish to protect their financial assets?” (CoCure ACT, 1st August 2004). Herd followed this up by saying: “More and more doctors have become entrenched in an ‘all in the head’ bias about ME/CFS that is not founded upon evidentiary science. Instead of welcoming advancements of science, their minds have become ever more closed to objective laboratory findings that conflict with their belief systems….Doctors who are uninformed about the illness and those firmly entrenched in flawed ideologic bias may not even bother to read new research articles (so) many patients see no improvement in accessibility to adequate clinical care…Proponents of the idea that ME/CFS is a psychosocial phenomenon have been getting more and more of their articles in the medical journals. They hold a powerful and influential position in the World Health Organisation and in many influential governmental/medical committees….We must find ways to remove ideology and speculation from the equation (and) develop new means of having science speak for itself to break the logjam of flawed ideologic bias” (Co-Cure ACT: 19th October 2004). It is high time for the Wessely School and all to whom they act as advisors to engage with the immunological basis of ME/CFS. As one sufferer pointed out in 2005, attributions do not maintain this illness, any more than they maintain cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, or any other physical illness (Co-Cure ACT: 27th July 2005). In fact, the objective and reproducible evidence plainly shows that ME/CFS is maintained by a dangerously dysregulated immune system. There is such a gross mismatch between the severity and complexity of ME/CFS and the medical/public perception of the disorder as promulgated by the Wessely School that, until these psychiatrists are held to account (and health care professionals and public alike are informed and educated about the nature of ME/CFS), patients will continue to suffer iatrogenic harm. Wessely has often claimed that he does not want to get into the fruitless “organic” versus “functional” debate, but many people believe Invest in ME (Charity Nr. 1114035) (justifiably, when one reads what he has actually published about people with ME/CFS over the last 25 years) that he has done more than anyone else to fan this particular flame by distorting the perception of the disease; they also believe that he has done much to prevent ME/CFS attaining disease legitimacy and thus to halt not only the progress of medical science but also the provision of care for very sick patients. The body of biomedical evidence about ME/CFS from across the disciplines is now so extensive that the question repeatedly asked is: at what point will that body of scientific knowledge be so great that it will be considered serious professional misconduct to ignore it and to continue to deceive physicians and patients alike by pretending that it does not exist? There is a body of informed opinion (including clinicians, medical scientists, lawyers, research analysts, university lecturers and members of other professions) that the General Medical Council ought to be required to assess the Wessely School’s fitness to practice medicine: many people are of the view that the Wessely School are a risk to ME/CFS sufferers by their erroneous assertion that ME/CFS patients’ multiple symptoms “have no anatomical or physiological basis” (Brit J Hosp Med 1994:51:8:421-427), a categoric Wessely School view that has not changed over the intervening 18 years and which seems to be reflected in NICE’s proscription of appropriate laboratory tests (in particular, no immunological tests may be carried out); by their ignoring of the biomedical evidence, and by their insistence that ME/CFS is a functional/behavioural disorder and a “pseudo-disease” that must not be investigated as this would reinforce sufferers’ alleged misperceptions that they are physically sick. However, even though the national implementation of the Wessely School’s personal philosophy is not based on medical science, nothing might come of a complaint to the GMC because, as Dame Janet Smith (The Rt Hon Lady Justice Smith, a High Court Judge and former President of the Council of The Inns of Court) aptly said on 3rd October 2011, the GMC is “a deeply dysfunctional institution” (Channel 4; Dispatches). www.investinme.org Page 97 of 108
98 Publizr Home