Tag: advocacy

PACE Trial’s Forbidden Fruit, Part 3: Charities Must Echo Patient Calls For Data Release

This is an excellent idea of Clark’s (reprinted from his blog): a way of making our feelings known about the release of the PACE Trial data. Please consider joining in.

The Self-Taught Author

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I recently wrote about the Freedom of Information (FOI) request that the Information Commissioner upheld, ordering Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) to release the data requested from the PACE trial. I provided an example of exactly what data was requested to demonstrate that the release would not include any personal identifiers of patients from the trial. I also highlighted the scaremongering of the PACE authors and their institutions that is misleading people into thinking the data is personal data when it is not. Before that, I wrote about why we must be allowed to see the data.

QMUL released a statement about the case, stating that they were seeking advice of patients, but they have not explained how this advice is going to be sought or under what conditions.

Many ME/CFS patients will obviously want to have their opinions taken into account. It is clearly a matter that patients…

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Time to be Heard

Six weeks on from the infamously unhelpful article by Sarah Knapton in the Daily Telegraph, the online version of the newspaper has published an article on ME by Dr Charles Shepherd of the ME Association with a view to correcting some of the misinformation. This was part of a deal which was struck by way of redress for the Telegraph falling so short of the truth on this occasion, as part of which they also published a ‘clarification’ of their assertion that ME isn’t really a chronic illness. As the clarification stated that the study they had reported actually said no such thing, it might have been more appropriate to call it  a ‘correction’ but I suppose you can’t expect a leading national newspaper to have such a precise grasp of the English language.

As for Dr Shepherd’s article, it doesn’t appear in the print edition, this in marked contrast to Knapton’s article which was linked from the front page. We have elderly relatives who read the original article but will only receive Shepherd’s piece because we’ll print it out and send them it. Many other Telegraph readers will sadly remain in ignorance.

This sort of imbalance is pretty much standard, of course, in situations like this, and Dr Shepherd and the ME Association are to be congratulated for at least getting the deal they did. It is worth, too, saying a word or two extra in praise of Charles Shepherd, who has been performing duties like this on our behalf for the best part of three decades now, plodding time and again to the barricades to call out the truth into the no man’s land of ignorance, doubt and incomprehension, then plodding patiently back again in the knowledge that he will probably have to do the same thing all over again in an another week’s time. And another. And another. The man is a hero. We are very fortunate to have him.

We are also lucky to have ME patients such as Tom Kindlon who have been plugging away with well reasoned comments for years, slowly exposing the fracture lines in the PACE Trial and counteracting other misconceptions. Not all of us are capable of such exhaustive feats of analysis, and yet there is a growing understanding that we all have a part to play in getting the truth out there. Continue reading “Time to be Heard”