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Psychiatry & the Neurological Disorder M.E.
Jan van Roijen - 17.01.2004 20:47
In this aricle you will find a very important document from Malcolm Hooper, Emeritus Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, who describes the horrors - done to seriously ill sufferers of the neurological disorder ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelits) - sometimes wrongly called CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome).
This document was prepared by Prof. Malcolm Hooper et al. for the Countess of Mar for a briefing for the House of Commons Select Health Committee; Thursday 22 January 2004 (  http://www.parliamentlive.tv ).
This unique, historical paper is rather long; I therefore have decided to give you an introduction -specially about this treatment in the Netherlands - and some impressions from Prof Hooper's article, which can be read in full at:
http://listserv.surfnet.nl/scripts/WA.EXE?A3=ind0401A&L=me-net&P=262712&E=2&B=--2002778326-851401618-1074170858%3D%3A11646&N=hooper%2Edoc&T=application%2Fmsword
This paper is about the terror and the misuse of "psychiatry", which is worse and takes place on a bigger scale then what happened in Soviet Union (USSR) under communist reign:
".....A CONSIDERATION OF THE ROLE OF PROFESSOR SIMON WESSELY AND OTHER MEMBERS OF THE "WESSELY SCHOOL" IN THE PERCEPTION OF MYALGIC ENCEPHALOMYELITIS (ME) IN THE UK......."
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Help ME Circle, 13 January 2004
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Editorship :  j.van.roijen@chello.nl
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"........No progress will be made unless everyone helps to publicise the facts contained in this document to all health professionals, to Members of Parliament and to the media.........."
Dear Readers,
Below you will find a very important document from Malcolm Hooper, Emeritus Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, who describes the horrors - done to seriously ill sufferers of the neurological disorder ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelits) - sometimes wrongly called CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome).
This document was prepared by Prof. Malcolm Hooper et al. for the Countess of Mar for a briefing for the House of Commons Select Health Committee.
This unique, historical paper is rather long; I therefore have decided to give you some impressions below, and to include the address for the full article in Word format - see my introduction above.
This paper is about the terror and the misuse of "psychiatry", which is worse and takes place on a bigger scale then what happened in Soviet Union (USSR) under communist reign:
".....A CONSIDERATION OF THE ROLE OF PROFESSOR SIMON WESSELY AND OTHER MEMBERS OF THE "WESSELY SCHOOL" IN THE PERCEPTION OF MYALGIC ENCEPHALOMYELITIS
(ME) IN THE UK......."
But consider that this not only happens in the UK.
In the Netherlands we have the so called "CFS" Research Group from the Nijmegen University:
They use the same tactics: “.....manipulation - distortion - deliberately portraying things differently from what is known - falsifying facts - invention - misquotation - suppression - illegitimate interpretation - political re-modelling - exploiting public ignorance and intimidation.......” - as described below.
These grooms and fanatic followers of this very "school" are in Simon Wessely's service; and they are even more dangerous than their 'leader'.
In the UK opposition is growing -- scientists, physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, patient organisations, parliamentarians, the media, etc. against this reign of terror.
But the "CFS" research group of Nijmegen has the absolute power in this country. And get the full collaboration from the Dutch Government. Under the ministry of Mrs Dr. E. Borst-Eilers - 'coincidentally' now President of the ' "CFS" Committee' of the Health Council of the Netherlands - they could prosper and grow.
They have the medical journals, and the newspapers - even the most critical - under their influence; the journalists write what they dictate....
"....They can cure/recover 85% of the patients...." (sic)
These people have, like their English colleagues, blood on their hands:
".....Suicide rates are very high, not necessarily because patients are psychiatrically disturbed, but because the unavoidable isolation and the physical suffering are simply unbearable without
adequate support. The losses are many, including loss of career, loss of marriage, loss of ability to be self-supporting and loss of independence....."
As you will read in this document, there is much to say about The Chief Medical Officer’s Working Group Report on CFS/ME (UK - 2002)
But I dare to predict here, that the report of this ‘independent’ ' "CFS" Committee' of the Health Council of the Netherlands will be worse. This ‘independent’ committee is appointed by the President of the Health Council of the Netherlands - Prof. dr JA Knottnerus - a follower of Simon Wessely; the bulk of this ‘independent’ commission, that he appointed consists of followers of Simon Wessely; and the President of this ‘independent’ commission - the former minister of Health: Mrs Dr. E. Borst-Eilers - is a follower of Simon Wessely.
There is - in contrast to The Chief Medical Officer’s Working Group on CFS/ME - no input from the ‘hands-on’ experts. There only was a short informal talk between the President Mrs Dr. E. Borst-Eilers and her assistant the ‘Secretary Standing Committee on Medicine’ - Mrs Y. A. van Duivenboden, PhD - also a follower of Simon Wessely - and the four patient organisations for ‘inventory-taking’.
I was asked by a small patient group “Vereniging ME-Huis” - Association ME-House - to be present at this meeting, together with about 6 -7 (?) other severe bed- or housebound patients - most of them were laying on stretchers.
Perhaps I will talk about this horrible experience later, whereby the ‘independent’ President Mrs Dr. E. Borst-Eilers dishonoured and insulted us patients, whereby she said that we could recover, if we would practice Graded Exercise.........!
-.......Perhaps I will talk later about - and publish - the letter, full of lies, and affronts that was sent to me the next day by the ‘independent’ ‘Secretary Standing Committee on Medicine’ - Mrs Y. A. van Duivenboden, PhD., in which she cancelled the promised appointment that we made. ..............
Perhaps I will talk later - and publish - the letter that was sent to me by the ‘independent’ President of the Health Council of the Netherlands - Prof. Dr JA Knottnerus......
Perhaps I will talk later about - and publish - the letter that was sent to the patients organisations by Prof. Dr JA Knottnerus, in which he threatened with legal actions against me - without mentioning my name.
I have to stop now - the batteries are empty -
Finally I want to say to the members of this “CFS Commission”, that you will not be let off the hook so easily; for example those of you who wrote the fraudulent papers: “Fatigue and the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” - literature study - (NIVEL - 1997) and “Long-standing physical Unexplained Fatigue Complaints”- (university Nijmegen, NHG -Dutch GP Society-, NIVEL -1997) -
In these studies all the existing biological research is omitted. All references are from Wessely and Co, and Van der Meer/ Blijenberg and Co, all references are studies, done with the loosest Oxford criteria from Michael Sharpe - on the payroll of the insurance industry - instead of the official CDC -1988 criteria - from Holmes et al.
SO ALL the references are about “Idiopathic Chronic Fatigue” [WHO -ICD-10: 48.0 - “Mental and Behavioural Disorders”] -- instead of ME / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome [WHO - ICD-10: G93.3 - Neurological disorder] - and that is SWINDLE...!
You could do this, because nobody reads Dutch......
But this time the ME patients will link hands and translate your whole report in English - so know, that scientists from all over the world are watching you, while you are writing......
“.....American and Australian research has shown that the quality of life in this disorder is lower than for any other chronic illness group apart from terminal cancer and that the quality of life is uniquely disrupted on all levels.......”
Out of the name of thousands and thousands ME sufferers, children and adults, all over the world, I want to thank all Health Professionals, Members of Parliament and.... the MEDIA, who will read this historical document carefully. I can assure you that you will not believe your eyes; and only with YOUR HELP we can be released out of the claws of those monsters, who are described below.
".....Without doubt, the influence of Simon Wessely has resulted in a cascade of horrors which most people in the UK do not know about and when they do, they find scarcely believable....."
Out of the name of thousands and thousands ME sufferers all over the world children and adults, I want to say to Professor Hooper and his team:
We are suffering for so long, we are so terrible and unbearable ill, we have no life, we have lost everything that make life livable; we can't stand it any longer; we need your help so badly - Thank you so much for all your efforts and for this beautiful paper.......
~Jan van Roijen
successful actor, with a broken career for 22 years
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THE MENTAL HEALTH MOVEMENT:
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PERSECUTION OF PATIENTS?
This is the latest document from Professor Malcolm Hooper et al. It is long (75 pages in total but these include 23 pages of quotations from the published works of Simon Wessely and Michael Sharpe, all of which are relevant and topical).
No progress will be made unless everyone helps to publicise the facts contained in this document to all health professionals, to Members of Parliament and to the media.
THE MENTAL HEALTH MOVEMENT: PERSECUTION OF PATIENTS?
A CONSIDERATION OF THE ROLE OF PROFESSOR SIMON WESSELY AND OTHER MEMBERS OF THE "WESSELY SCHOOL" IN THE PERCEPTION OF MYALGIC ENCEPHALOMYELITIS (ME) IN THE UK
Background Briefing for the House of Commons Select Health Committee
Is it the case, as demonstrated in a TV documentary, that multi- national corporations and not governments now control the world? Are powerful and influential psychiatrists who work within the Mental Health Movement linked to the multi-national corporations that now dominate and control medical and research institutions and whose life-blood is profit? (Politics isn't working: the End of Politics. Cambridge academic Noreena Hertz presented evidence that multi-national corporations are taking the place of elected governments. ITV Channel 4, 13th May 2001)
To the detriment of the sick, the deciding factor governing policies on medical research and on the management and treatment of patients is increasingly determined not by medical need but by economic considerations.
Document prepared for the Countess of Mar by Malcolm Hooper, Emeritus Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, in collaboration with members of the ME community, Department of Life Sciences, University of Sunderland, SR2 7EE, UK
December 2003
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Evidence is presented in this document to show that
o In the UK, patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME, also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or CFS), particularly children, have suffered gross and barbaric abuse and persistent denigration as a consequence of the beliefs of certain psychiatrists who are attempting to control the national agenda for this complex and severe neuro-immunological disorder
o These psychiatrists are shown to be clearly in breach of the first tenet of medicine --- first do no harm--- in that by their words and deeds they have wreaked havoc in the lives of ME/CFS patients and their families by their arrogant pursuit of a psychiatric construct of the disorder which ignores the abundant clinical and scientific evidence (widely presented in the international medical and scientific literature) of the organic nature of ME/CFS
o There have been persistent and frequently covert attempts by these psychiatrists to subvert the international classification of this disorder, with destructive consequences for those affected
o To the serious disadvantage of patients, these psychiatrists have propagated untruths and falsehoods about the disorder to the medical, legal, insurance and media communities, as well as to Government Ministers and to Members of Parliament, resulting in the withdrawal and erosion of both social and financial support
o Influenced by these psychiatrists, Government bodies such as the Medical Research Council have continued to propagate the same falsehoods with the result that patients are left without any hope of understanding or of health service provision or delivery. As a consequence, Government funding into the biomedical aspects of the disorder is non-existent
o This coterie of psychiatrists has proven affiliations with corporate industry and has insidiously infiltrated all the major institutions, directing funding for research into an exclusively psychiatric model of the disorder, focusing on "management strategies" involving psychiatric techniques, even though such techniques have been shown to be at best of no lasting value and at worst to be harmful to patients with ME/CFS
o The same psychiatric model has been extended by these psychiatrists to a number of other disorders including Gulf War Syndrome, fibromyalgia, multiple chemical sensitivity and chronic low-dose organo-phosphate poisoning, leaving many other people without the help and support they so urgently need.
THE MENTAL HEALTH MOVEMENT -- PERSECUTION OF PATIENTS ?
A consideration of the role of Professor Simon Wessely in the perception of myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME): A matter for the Select Committee on Health
NB. For brevity, not all references are cited in the text but all are available on request from the Countess of Mar, House of Lords, London SW1A 0PW
Brief Introduction
The matter for scrutiny by the Select Committee on Health concerns myalgic encephalomyelititis (ME) and is straightforward:
(i) is the Department of Health's current and proposed policy on the management of patients with ME as provided and promoted by psychiatrists of the "Wessely School" (see below) harmful to patients and
(ii) are such patients being abused as a consequence of scientific misconduct?
ME has been formally classified by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) as a neurological disorder since 1969, but psychiatrist Simon Wessely advises Government that the disorder does not exist other than as an "aberrant belief" that one has a disorder called ME. He refers to "chronic fatigue syndrome" (CFS) and asserts that CFS is a somatoform (psychiatric) disorder in which patients produce physical symptoms as a means of expressing emotional distress.
This is at variance with the WHO classification of the disorder: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is listed in the ICD as a term by which ME is also known and according to the ICD, the two terms are synonymous, thus "CFS" does not represent a psychiatric disorder even though Wessely School psychiatrists assert that it does.
Of potential significance is the fact that American researchers have demonstrated that in ME/CFS, a particular pathway in the body which is affected by viruses can also be affected by chemicals and it is known that ME/CFS can be either virally or chemically induced (Interferon-induced proteins are elevated in blood samples of patients with chemically or virally induced chronic fatigue syndrome. Vojdani A; Lapp CW. Immunopharmacol Immunotoxicol 1999:21: (2):175-202)
For at least a decade, questions about possible scientific misconduct and flawed methodology by Dr (now Professor) Wessely and his group of co-psychiatrists have been raised and published in international medical journals but it is only relatively recently that his long-time involvement as medical adviser to commercial bodies having a vested interest in his publications on ME has been exposed (see below).
There is no question that many millions of pounds sterling are at stake and that the vested interest groups for whom these psychiatrists act as medical advisers would like to prevent insurance cover for ME patients (those with a psychiatric label are denied medical insurance cover); prevent disability payments to them; prevent successful liability lawsuits and maintain the supremacy of their industries (see below).
Increasingly, it is now "policy-makers" and Government advisers, not experienced clinicians, who determine how a disorder is classified and managed in the NHS: the determination of an illness classification and the provision of policy-driven "management" is a very profitable business.
The situation is admirably set out in a letter dated 29th December 2003 to the e-British Medical Journal from Angela Kennedy, Social Science Lecturer at the Open University:
"I suspect that psychiatry, if it is not careful, will eventually become most ridiculed over its adherence to one theme: that of 'somatization'. Presently, sufferers of Myalgic Encephalitis (sic) (also called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) are increasingly subject to medical negligence or even abuse because the huge body of international bio-medical evidence is ignored, especially in Britain, in favour of an unfortunately incomprehensible, incoherent and empirically inadequate theory.
"The categorization of an illness as being psychosomatic also means a further categorisation of an individual as 'deviant' rather than 'ill', so that they are denied sympathy, support, and even benefits they are entitled to. Categorised as 'deviant', the ill then suffer increasing social exclusion and material inequalities.
"The main problem with somatization theories is that they cannot be either proven or disproven and therefore are not very 'scientific' at all.
"In relation to ME/CFS at least, flawed, unsubstantiated theories have been uncritically adopted and treated as 'fact', even against the already substantial (and substantiated) body of bio-medical evidence which continues to grow.
"The material effects of such sloppy 'science' have had two main consequences for ME sufferers: firstly, the medical impairments of the illness have often been ignored and left untreated, and many sufferers therefore become severely disabled, their physical health absolutely devastated and their chances of a restoration to good health uncertain at best. Secondly, children in particular end up victims of institutional abuse (though this can happen to adults too). In the case of children, they may be forcibly removed from their concerned parents and subjected to draconian 'treatments' that could, quite easily, be termed abuse.
"The capacity for abuse of institutional power appears to have increased enormously, and this is becoming most evident in the fields of health care and particularly psychiatry. How such problems are addressed will determine the future of such disciplines, as far- reaching demands for justice from those who are faced with or survive such institutional abuse are inevitable, and this will lead to a critical review of medical practice, both from other disciplines, and society at large".
The Mental Health Movement
In 21st century medicine the Mental Health Movement is politically correct and immensely powerful: it is backed by the giant chemical, pharmaceutical and insurance industries which are now the funders and controllers of both undergraduate and post-graduate medical education. In the UK, these industries have known links to research funding bodies such as the Medical Research Council (MRC) and as a result, a vast amount of public money is presently being provided in an attempt to strengthen the currently weak psychiatrically-driven research evidence that behaviour-modifying "chronic illness management strategies" are effective.
As a consequence, the MRC has decided not to fund urgently needed biomedical research into complex and devastating disorders such as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).
Also relevant may be the Council of Europe Strasbourg Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, which confers rights including provision for drug and other medical trials on human beings which in certain circumstances could be carried out without the individual's consent: this applies to three groups of people in particular:
(i) those who are deemed to be mentally ill
(ii) those for whom no other known treatment is effective
(iii) children
The Convention (not yet ratified by the UK) specifically states that in certain situations, "general interests" will take precedence over those of the individual.
Concurrently, in the UK, proposals for the Reform of the Mental Health Act were drawn so widely that they would give psychiatrists far greater powers to enforce compulsory psychiatric treatment upon both adults and children: proposals included provision for psychiatrists to be able to drug people (including children against the wishes of their parents) if they have "any disability or disorder of the mind or brain, whether permanent or temporary, which results in an impairment of mental functioning".
Mental Health Movement advocates claim that disorders such as ME and CFS come into what they call the "medically unexplained symptoms" category (known as MUS or MUPS, which stands for "medically unexplained physical symptoms") and that such disorders are psychogenic in origin; contrary to established principles of scientific investigation and discovery, these psychiatrists assert that "if all you look for are biomedical explanations, you're missing the whole picture" and that if Government wants to solve the waiting-list dilemma (which it does, for political reasons), "they will have to channel serious money at this problem" by funding psychiatric management regimes ( http://www.thes.co.uk/search/story.aspx). The implications of the implementation of this policy are already spiralling out of control.
On 4th May 2000, a letter from the Office of the Minister of State at the Department of Health (signed by John Hutton) seemed not to rule out the re-classification of ME/CFS as a "mental" disorder, stating it was unlikely that the proposed reforms to the Mental Health Act would affect such patients (quote) "even if (ME/CFS) were reclassified as a mental rather than a physical disorder".
In October 1999 Dr Michael Sharpe (a psychiatrist and prominent member of the Wessely School) gave a lecture at the University of Strathclyde at which he said: "Purchasers and health care providers with hard-pressed budgets are understandably reluctant to spend money on patients who are not going to die and for whom there is controversy about the 'reality' of their condition (and who) are undeserving of treatment".
Are those with other classified neurological disorders also "undeserving of treatment"?
Infiltration of institutions by vested interest groups was the subject of an article by George Monbiot published on 9th December 2003 in the Guardian (Invasion of the Entryists), from which the following extracts are taken and to whom acknowledgement is made:
"One of the strangest aspects of modern politics is the dominance of former left-wingers who have swung to the right. The "neo-cons" pretty well run the White House and the Pentagon, the (UK) Labour party and key departments of the British government. But there is a group which has travelled even further to the extremities of the pro- corporate right. Its tactics (involve) entering organisations and taking them over. Research published for the first time today suggests that members of this group have colonised a crucial section of the British establishment. The organisation began in the late 1970s as a Trotskyist splinter; it immediately set out to destroy competing oppositional movements. In 1988 it set up a magazine called Living Marxism (known as) LM. By this time it had moved to the far right and was led by the academic Frank Furedi who started writing for the Centre for Policy Studies (founded by Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher) and who contacted the supermarket chains, offering, for £7,500, to educate their customers 'about complex scientific issues'. In the late 1990s the group started infiltrating the media, with remarkable success. In 2000, LM was sued by ITN after falsely claiming that (its) news journalists had fabricated evidence of Serb atrocities against Bosnian Muslims. LM closed, and was resurrected as the web magazine Spiked.
"All this is already in the public domain. But now, thanks to the work of researcher Jonathan Matthews, what seems to be a new front in this group's campaign has come to light. Its participants have taken on key roles in the formal infrastructure of public communication used by the science and medical establishment.
"Its participants (work) for the PR firm Regester Larkin, which defends companies such as the biotech giants Aventis, Bayer and Pfizer against consumer and environmental campaigners.
"(One of its participants) is Fiona Fox, who is the director of the Science Media Centre (which) is funded, amongst others, by the pharmaceutical companies Astra Zeneca, Dupont and Pfizer. Fox has used the Science Media Centre to promote the views of industry and to launch fierce attacks against those who question them.
"Are we looking at a group which wants power for its own sake, or one following a political design? The scientific establishment appears unwittingly to have permitted its interests to be represented to the public by the members of a bizarre and cultish political network. Far from rebuilding public trust in science and medicine, this group's repugnant philosophy could finally destroy it".
Of significance to the ME community is the fact that Spiked's health writer is Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, well-known for presenting and promoting the views of Professor Simon Wessely and for his perverse and immoderate attacks on those with ME. One such article can be found at http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000002D3B6.htm (SPIKED: Health: 17th January 2002: "ME: the making of a new disease"). Referring to the then newly published Chief Medical Officer's Working Group report on CFS/ME (see text), Fitzpatrick roundly derided the CMO, Professor Liam Donaldson: "The CFS/ME compromise reflects a surrender of medical authority to irrationality. The scale of this capitulation is apparent when Professor Donaldson claims that CFS/ME should be classified together with conditions such as multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease. The effectiveness of the ME lobby reflects its middle- class base."
Also of significance is the fact that in its NOTES FOR EDITORS, Spiked states that Professor Simon Wessely is available for comment or interview and can be contacted through Sandy Starr at Spiked (0207-269-9234).
Of relevance to the ME community is that fact that Lord (David) Sainsbury (Science Minister -see text) is a keen supporter of the Science Media Centre. It is Lord Sainsbury's Linbury Trust that since 1991 has financially supported studies of chronic fatigue by psychiatrists of the Wessely School.
Information on the GMWATCH website (www.gmwatch.org) is also important to the ME community. By 2003, Lord Sainsbury had donated over £11 million to the Labour Party. Mark Seddon, a member of Labour's National Executive Committee, told the BBC "In any other country, I think a government minister donating such vast amounts of money and effectively buying a political party would be seen for what it is, a form of corruption of the political process".
For some, the choice of an unelected biotech investor and food industrialist to be Science Minister is more than emblematic of the UK's corporate-science culture.
In a recent Financial Times article, Lord Sainsbury cites the following statistics: British universities spun off 199 companies in 2000, up from an annual average of 67 in the previous five years. The UK's ratio of companies to research spending is now more than six times higher than the US. "It's a dazzling record", Lord Sainsbury is quoted as saying.
Not everyone shares Sainsbury's enthusiasm. Professor Stephen Rose of the Open University Biology Department is among those who have commented critically on this emerging corporate science culture: "The whole climate of what might be open and independent scientific research has disappeared".
What is the problem?
The problem is that the Mental Health Movement does not restrict itself to mental disorders and ME has been the subject of unremitting psychiatric spin since the late 1980s: although ME is not classified by the WHO in the ICD as "mental", in the UK it is being high-jacked and covertly re-classified as "mental" by a small but influential group of psychiatrists known colloquially as the "Wessely School" (Hansard: Lords: 19th December 1998:1013 - see below) who have their own vested interests in casting their net of illness control ever wider. They have proposed a hypothetical model that cannot be tested experimentally and it is this group of psychiatrists who are the most assiduous advocates of the Mental Health Movement in the UK, to the extent that, in the case of ME, they have been shown to have created their own conclusions before generating the data which would support such conclusions.
The prevalence of ME/CFS is higher than for multiple sclerosis, which in the UK affects about 83,000 people; in January 2002 the Report of the Chief Medical Officer's Working Group (see below) gave a UK population prevalence of 0.2 - 0.4% (ie. up to 240,000 affected people). Certainly the incidence is known to be rising: as long as a decade ago, UNUM (one of the largest disability insurers) reported that in the five years from 1989 - 1993, disability claims for this disorder increased by 460%. In terms of insurance costs, ME/CFS came second in the list of the five most expensive conditions, being three places above AIDS.
At the publication of the UK Chief Medical Officer's Working Group Report on "CFS/ME" (see below), the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) went on public record on BBC News on 11th January 2002 stating that the treatment of "CFS/ME" must improve and that it should be classed as a chronic condition with long-term effects on health, alongside other illnesses such as multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease. It was not only Dr Fitzpatrick of Spiked who disagreed with the CMO: the week after the CMO made his announcement, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) highlighted the view of a prominent member of the Wessely School (psychiatrist Michael Sharpe) that doctors would not accept a particular strategy just because the CMO's Report recommended it.
Whether ME and CFS represent the same disorder or are two different entities has engaged many health care professionals, especially certain psychiatrists, in an often hostile political battle. These psychiatrists advise Government that ME does not exist as a separate entity; that "CFS/ME" is one and the same disorder and that it is a mental disorder which must be "managed" by mind-altering psychotherapy, despite the fact that, accepting that CFS equates with ME, international non-psychiatrist experts consider it to be a physical (ie. organic) neuro-immunological disorder and that there is a significant literature which supports an organic pathoaetiology.
In the UK, the primary duty of care for the sick has been displaced in the fierce battle for supremacy waged by this group of psychiatrists. Because personal status, competing personal interests, commercial interests and massive funding issues are involved, battle lines remain drawn and it is the patients who are caught in the cross-fire. As Shakespeare noted: "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport" (King Lear, Act IV Scene I).
What is the "Wessely School"?
~JvR: for continuing, see:
http://listserv.surfnet.nl/scripts/WA.EXE?A3=ind0401A&L=me-net&P=262712&E=2&B=--2002778326-851401618-1074170858%3D%3A11646&N=hooper%2Edoc&T=application%2Fmsword
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 E-Mail: jan.van.roijen@chello.nl
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