ME Association – spoonseekerdotcom

Wearing a Forced Smile

Time after time over the years, people with M.E. (myalgic encephalomyelitis) have had to put up with hearing total bunkum about their condition, but rarely does the ‘science’ get as flaky as last Thursday’s announcements on the ‘Smile’ Trial, a study which purported to assess the efficacy of the ‘Lightning Process’ for children with M.E. This process (known as LP for short) could be described as a cross between neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and amateur dramatics, or (to put it less kindly though perhaps more accurately) as a form of brainwashing.

The precise nature of LP is wreathed in secrecy and participants are told not to disclose the details. However, according to anecdotal reports, patients undergoing the process are told that they are responsible for their illness and are free to choose to live their life without it if they wish. They are told they can achieve this through LP but it will only work if they believe in it. Everything they think and say must be positive. They must tell everyone they are better. When they feel any symptoms or negative thoughts, they must stretch out their arms with the palms facing out and shout “Stop!” If the process doesn’t work, they’re doing something wrong: it is their fault if they’re still ill.

Can you guess what results this trial has achieved?

Well, the researchers reported that LP combined with standard medical care produced better results than standard medical care alone. If you look at how they assessed this, the outcome was scarcely surprising. In common with other similar trials assessing ‘psychological’ treatments for M.E. (including the controversial £5m publically funded PACE trial) it was unblinded and there was very little in terms of objective assessment of outcomes. The results were almost entirely assessed using self-completed questionnaires. So in other words what they did was to tell the children they were better and then ask them if they were better. Just in case this didn’t achieve the desired outcome, remember that the children had also been told that the process would only work if they believed in it and if they didn’t recover it would be their fault.

Remember too that these were children being questioned by adults in positions of perceived authority.

Now what was that answer again, children?

Apparently we are supposed to treat this extraordinary procedure as a piece of serious science. After all, we have the science editors at the BBC and the Guardian as our role models. As with the many previous papers from the PACE researchers and their colleagues, these so called professional journalists swallow the whole thing without so much as a grimace and repeat it all back just as they have been told it, like performing parrots. The source on which they rely to tell them what to think is the Science Media Centre, a shadowy organisation which purportedly exists to provide a balanced view of science but in fact appears to promote the agenda of vested interests: in this case those who have built careers on the backs of patients with M.E., promoting their unproven psychological theories, misdirecting patients and their families, and effectively diverting funds from much-needed biomedical research.

On top of all the nonsense they spouted in Thursday’s coverage about the trial itself, these ‘journalists’ have also been coached to repeat yet again the habitual misinformation about M.E. researchers being abused by patients, apparently to such an extent that most of them have left the field altogether. This simply isn’t true. While one or two psychiatrists have announced their retirement, at least one purportedly in fear of his life, this doesn’t seem to stop them continuing to write about M.E. or, in at least one case, issuing further papers on the subject. These accusations against patients reached their peak at the Freedom of Information Tribunal which released important data about the PACE Trial. The Tribunal ruled that the accusations had been greatly exaggerated. Apparently the sole piece of evidence produced for all the so-called threats was that one of the researchers had been heckled at a lecture. In reality, while any abuse which may occur is regrettable, by far the bulk of what these researchers complain about is simply legitimate criticism about abysmal so-called ‘science’ such as the Smile trial.

Meanwhile, those scientists researching the biomedical roots of M.E., of whom there are many worldwide – though precious few in the UK where psychiatrists take most of the funding – get on extremely well with patients, who in many cases raise the money they need to do their work.

Though such research remains grossly underfunded, progress is slowly being made. As Prof Jose Montoya announced at a conference just last week, it is no longer true to say that this is a mystery illness. It is one whose pathogenesis is slowly being unveiled.

Only a small proportion of such progress is reported in the UK media. The Science Media Centre don’t tell the journalists about it and, it seems, they can’t be bothered to look for themselves.

To add to the misinformation: on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme (approx 7-50 am), lead Smile researcher Esther Crawley grossly misrepresented the patient support group the M.E. Association by claiming that they didn’t want M.E to be researched in children. In fact, their complaint was not against research for children with M.E. in general, but the Smile Trial in particular, which they considered to be unethical. I have to say that I agree with them. Children frame their view of the world at least partially according to what adults tell them, so for them to be told they are not ill, contrary to their own perceived experience and to what is now understood about the physical reality of this neuroimmune condition, appears to be a betrayal of their trust. Research evidence by VanNess et al, among others, strongly suggests that it is harmful for M.E. patients to ignore the way they feel and push themselves beyond their capability. This can bring about a long-term deterioration in their condition. Unlike adults, children have a good chance of making a full recovery if they are simply allowed to take the rest they need. To encourage them to ignore the way they feel, as does the lightning process, is therefore particularly unfortunate. It can push children who might otherwise have recovered into a lifetime of chronic illness.

This is not the only potential damage to children. Others have been driven into anxiety and depression under the pressure of being made to act as if they are well when they are not. Some have even attempted suicide under the strain of this.

The Guardian article reported that Esther Rantzen’s daughter Emily had been cured of M.E. by the Lightning Process: another piece of misinformation. It was reported some years ago that Emily actually had coeliac disease, not M.E., and she described the pressure of going for several years after her so called ‘recovery’ pretending she was well when she wasn’t:

“I’ve been used to secretly feeling I have to drag myself through life, forcing my body to be active and using mind over matter to ‘fake it till I feel it’. “

How many more children will be subjected to these various forms of harm following Thursday’s inaccurate coverage? And how long will it be till UK journalists start reporting M.E. responsibly?

The Hidden Burden of M.E.

A couple of days ago, on Severe M.E. Day, I came across this post by ‘Terry’ (pseudonym) on an M.E.-related Facebook group:

💙💜💚💙💜💚💙💜💚💙💜💚💙💜💚

I’m starting to write this at 4 o’clock in the morning. I have sleep reversal, and today, August 8th, is Severe M.E Understanding and Remembrance Day.

2 nights ago, seeking support, I posted under the title “Injured” that I had damaged my ribs, asking if anyone would be awake late, very late.
People were lovely and kind, some offering a number of solutions.

What the responses made me realise, however, is that I hadn’t done a very good job of explaining the severity of my condition generally. In fact, in crisis due to the injury, I hadn’t been able to explain anything at all.

When I joined the group, I never introduced myself and didn’t explain that I have a profoundly severe case of M.E. So, it feels a little bit like it might if one was gay and not ‘out’. Everybody’s assuming how I identify and offering solutions based on that mindset.
So, in honour of inclusivity and Severe M.E Understanding and Remembrance Day, I’m coming out, but just a little to save on your patience:

I haven’t left my home, bedroom or bed, since 1993, apart from an imposed house move, by ambulance and stretcher in 2003.
For 25 years I’ve been 100% bedbound and “bodybound” – barely able to move in the bed and only occupying two positions, either lying on my left side or propped by pillows for just long enough to eat.
At a very early point it was threatened that I would be removed from the practice list if I requested a home visit. The GPs refused to visit for 23 years “unless there was a medical need” . That is, they would come out to assess e.g a chest infection but there would be no management of my condition of severe and profound M.E.
I’ve recently actually been visited by a new GP, after the old ones retired (but only because of another acute injury) who has offered to visit me once a year. You might say ‘big deal!’ yet this one visit per year is an amazing, unprecedented and vast improvement.

I only gained access to the Internet in the spring of 2016 and find that most of the M.E groups on Facebook are solutions-orientated.
After the cumulative effects of 39 years I’m physically fragile, and exhausted beyond belief, and cannot even tolerate someone else helping. No interventions are possible.
I’m intolerant to all medication and frequently experience an inverse or idiosyncratic reaction. I’m barely able to move and can’t soak in the tub, visit a chiropractor or even apply creams designed to relieve the pain and inflammation.

Due to the severity and chronicity of my M.E I wasn’t/am not able to take any action whatsoever to alleviate or treat the extreme and acute pain caused by the injury.

The reason that I’m writing this is that, I’m sincerely glad for those who are able to follow protocols and improve their quality of life, but we need to be aware that this is not the case for everyone in the group.
There are those of us still out here for whom nothing has changed, because nothing is able to be changed.
We are invisible, ignored and sidelined and for the sake of the inclusivity of our group I’m hoping to make people living with very Severe M.E a little less invisible, once again, today.

(End of Terry’s post.)

This drastically abridged version of Terry’s situation seems to me to be eloquent evidence of:

1) how very extreme severe M.E. can be

2) the extent to which severely affected patients are – quite openly – neglected by health professionals

3) the way such patients feel they have to hide the full extent of their situation not only from people in general but even from people with M.E. who are less severely affected.

Most of us with M.E, have some experience of this feeling that we need to ‘hide away’ or ‘stay in the closet’ about our condition, usually because we can’t quite face the sheer extent of people’s ignorance about what we’re going through. In particular, we can’t face the likelihood that they’ll say something entirely inappropriate in an effort to try to be helpful and thereby trigger emotions we can ill afford the energy to experience.

How much worse must this be for those who are as severely affected as Terry, for whom the gulf of understanding is so much greater, who are even more likely to be met with jaw-dropping disbelief instead of appropriate empathy.

By and large this ignorance isn’t other people’s fault. It should be up to the health profession to inform them. But health professionals are of course the least likely to understand. They are the most likely to listen to the lies of those of their number who have built their careers on unfounded untruths about the condition. And this in turn gives them leave to neglect such patients, to ‘refuse to visit for 23 years’ as has been the case with Terry.

Also on Severe M.E. Day, the M.E. Association asked a question on its Facebook page:

If you have been severely affected by ME, or are currently severely affected, or are a carer or family member of someone severely or very severely affected, what changes would you like to see to the care that you (or the person you care for) receive from the NHS?

At the time of writing, many people have left comments or suggestions, including one from my wife Chris who has severe M.E. herself and is largely housebound but not (touch wood) bedbound for the time being. Chris wrote:

I would like to see the following charities really focus on improving things for severe ME people & lobbying NHS England for this.
The NICE guidelines do nothing for the severely affected….
I am thinking of a working collaborative of the MEA, Invest in ME, Tymes Trust, The ME Trust..working with each other & the 25% Group. (I have not included Action for ME because they are not trusted by many patients, ESPECIALLY THE SEVERELY AFFECTED owing to their close collaboration with the biopsychosocial NHS clinics & Esther Crawley).

1. to establish a dedicated flying squad of well informed, trained & compassionate health care professionals in each region of the country
2. to establish the exact numbers & a directory /database of people severely affected,
3.to visit severe ME patients WHO CANNOT TRAVEL even to any centres which are set up…
4. to provide help/ palliative care to them in their own beds at home
5. to liaise with their GPs/Social Services/carers etc

Such an initiative would not be ‘solutions-oriented’. The health professionals would not be trained to expect the patients to be up and about after a few months of encouragement. But they would be willing to assess and acknowledge the terrible situation in which so many severely affected find themselves, to allow them to be as they are without fear of blame, and to shine a light on the heavy burden such patients have had to carry, while the money which should have been spent on research to address the physical roots of their illness has been squandered instead on desperate attempts to justify exercise programmes.

If you agree with Chris’s suggestion or have some ideas of your own about what can be done to improve things for the severely affected, you can still respond on the MEA Facebook page. The post was on 8 August at 8-25 am.

Thanks to Terry for permission to repost their thoughts.

Hillsborough Law – Shifting the Balance in Favour of Truth

The conversation on this You Tube ‘video’ took place on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme on 11th July 2017 when Andy Burnham, prompted by host Eddie Mair, proposed the adoption of a ‘Hillsborough law’ to shift the balance in the many instances where ordinary people bring genuine complaints but are dismissed and even denigrated by the establishment. He described the latter in terms of a cosy network of relationships between high ranking people in public bodies and the media. Burnham, a former Health Secretary and now Mayor of Greater Manchester, was speaking after the announcement of an inquiry into the massive blood contamination scandal which cost the lives of over 2400 people who received transfusions in the UK in the seventies till the nineties. He compared this to other scandals such as the Hillsborough disaster, in all of which the complaints of those involved and their families have been dismissed and ignored for decades.

I’m sure there are many other examples of such injustices. Hopefully the recent Grenfell Tower disaster will be dealt with more swiftly.

The conversation reminded me of an issue in which I am very much involved, that of ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis), also known – misleadingly- as CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome). This may seem like a trivial issue compared to the others I have mentioned, but therein lies the primary injustice. Unfortunately the term ‘chronic fatigue’ gives the impression of patients who are just ‘tired all the time’ so this is the view that many people have of this condition.

The truth is that the lives of people with ME are more severely impacted than those with a great many other illnesses including MS, HIV, and congestive heart failure. They suffer with a wide range of symptoms, far more than just fatigue. Even those who are ‘moderately affected’ are severely ill by any normal standards, while those termed ‘severely affected’ are often confined permanently to bed, in continuous pain, unable to sit up, tolerate light, or even communicate with their loved ones. To make matters worse, the sicker they become, the less medical attention they get. Doctors don’t understand the condition or know what to do, so they just stay away. Many people have died from ME, though this is rarely acknowledged by the authorities.

ME has been trivialised by the medical authorities for decades, notably by two British psychiatrists who studied an outbreak of the illness at the Royal Free Hospital in the fifties and concluded that it had been due to ‘hysteria’. The only ‘evidence’ they cited for this was that most of those affected had been female.

The misconception that ME is a mental health issue has persisted over the years, in part due to what has seemed to be the deliberate intention of those in authority. They have spread this confusion by adopting the trivialising name ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’ and also by using a wide range of mutually contradictory diagnostic definitions. Many of these are so vague that they include other, less serious, forms of chronic fatigue which therefore get lumped in together with ME. This has led to inappropriate ‘therapies’ such as GET (graded exercise therapy) and CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) being recommended for ME.

CBT can be a helpful therapy to assist patients to live with a wide range of physical conditions but its most common use in CFS/ME is very different. It is used to convince patients that there is nothing physically wrong with them and that all they need to do is to slowly increase their level of activity (using GET) and they will recover. This approach may be moderately successful for some forms of chronic fatigue (such as that due to depression) but it is likely to be extremely damaging for ME. It flies in the face of research evidence which has revealed substantial physical abnormalities and an abnormal response to exercise. It also runs contrary to numerous patient surveys which report that GET makes many ME patients considerably worse, sometimes permanently so.

It is interesting to note that the PACE Trial, a large scale UK study which purported to illustrate the efficacy of CBT and GET for ME, was part funded by the DWP (Department of Work and Pensions) who are of course responsible for the payment of sickness benefits but are not normally involved in funding medical research. This draws attention to the fact that the governmental authorities have a vested interest in ‘proving’ ME to be a minor condition which responds well to short courses of relatively inexpensive ‘treatments ‘ like CBT and GET – even though this approach contradicts research evidence.

The PACE Trial itself has been a subject of substantial controversy, concerned patients having discovered a great many irregularities, the most astonishing of which was the change of patient entry criteria after the trial was started, thereby allowing patients to be ill enough to enter the trial, deteriorate during it, yet still be classed as ‘recovered’ at the end. This has naturally resulted in an upward distortion of the success rate.

PACE, in common with other research into ME/CFS by related researchers, contains a great many such defects, any one of which could have resulted in failure in a high school practical exam. Concerns have prompted more than forty eminent doctors and researchers who work in the field of ME/CFS to write to The Lancet, the journal which published the original PACE paper, calling for an independent review of the study.

A substantial critique of PACE’s many defects has been produced by the investigative journalist and public health lecturer David Tuller, who has also produced critiques of other studies by related researchers. A list of links to these articles can be found here. Building on the initial work of concerned patients, Tuller demonstrates glaring errors in these studies, yet the researchers and the supposedly reputable journals which publish them have responded to such criticisms with dismissive, unconvincing replies or else no response all.

As Andy Burnham suggested on the radio, there is a cosy network of people in authority who close ranks to defend each other against the criticisms of ordinary people. He mentioned politicians and the media but unfortunately – though it might damage the career of a politician like Burnham to suggest it – this is equally true of the medical profession. The PACE researchers seem to believe so strongly in their own preconceptions that they see nothing wrong in they or their colleagues ‘tweaking’ their studies to get the result that they believe to be the right one, and their friends in high places have such confidence in the integrity of their clubbable friends that they defend them without question, not feeling there is any requirement to take a look at the actual facts of the matter.

Part of their strategy – again as Burnham suggested – is to denigrate those who try to hold them to account. Patients had to fight hard to get vital data from PACE released under the Freedom of Information Act and met with vilification from the researchers for trying to do so. They were accused of making ‘vexatious’ requests for information, of ‘harassing’ the researchers, and even – in their attempts to unravel the complex sleights of hand that had been employed to get the researchers the results they wanted – of having ‘obsessive attention to detail’. At the FoA Tribunal which eventually ruled that the data should be released, patients were accused of presenting ‘a serious risk of violence to trial participants and researchers’ but this was deemed by the tribunal to be ‘grossly exaggerated’ and the ruling noted that the only evidence presented of such ‘violence’ was of one of the PACE researchers being heckled at a lecture.

Patients feel intense frustration that in spite of all the work done to expose the shortcomings of PACE and associated studies, they have not been retracted, and GET and CBT remain the recommended ‘therapies’ for ME/CFS in the U.K. Furthermore one of the PACE researchers’ associates – herself the source of numerous flawed and misleading papers on the condition – is now giving lectures in which she routinely vilifies the patients who question her research and accuses them of being ‘anti-science’. In view of the quality of the research in question, this is beyond irony.

Sadly, the cosy network even extends as far as some of the organisations which supposedly exist to further the interests of patients. The two main national organisations belong to a research committee whose Vice Chair gives the lectures mentioned in the previous paragraph and who seems to believe that severe ME in children is really ‘pervasive refusal syndrome’, a mental health condition for which no evidence exists. The use of this alternative diagnosis can lead to children being taken away from their parents and forcibly given a course of GET, even though this is not recommended for the severely affected and can result in severe disablement.

One of the patient organisations, Action for ME, has supported and enabled the PACE Trial itself, supposedly being involved to support the interests of patients yet singularly and spectacularly failing to do so. Increasingly, the patients whose financial contributions enable these organisations to exist are complaining about their actions and the company they keep – but sadly the cosy network described above seems to extend to their trustees and celebrity patrons, who themselves prefer to support those in authority rather than patients.

So yes, in the case of ME, we patients feel that the odds are stacked against us. A Hillsborough law would indeed be useful. As things stand, we ordinary patients seem to have very little power against the network of those with vested interests who believe that they and their friends must be right because of who they are. We have the truth on our side and we have the evidence to prove it – but that does not appear to be enough.

A quick PS: The national patient organisation I didn’t mention by name above is the ME Association. I would like to make plain that I have a great deal of respect for their work and that of their Medical Advisor Dr Charles Shepherd, who much of the time do a very good job of representing our interests. An example of this work is their recent petition to NICE regarding the decision not update the guidelines on ME/CFS (do consider signing if you haven’t already – this is important). However, MEA’s decision to stay in the CMRC and continue to work with those who malign patients and whose research contributes further misinformation about ME seems to me – and to many other patients – to be a serious error of judgement. They really should listen to the voice of informed patients.

PPS Sorry my first YouTube video isn’t exactly a multimedia extravaganza. It’s been a steep learning curve. Many thanks to Nigel B for helping me get as far as this.

Continue reading “Hillsborough Law – Shifting the Balance in Favour of Truth”

Response from Dr Hammond plus new Research

Following on from the previous post about Prof Esther Crawley’s broadcast on BBC Radio Bristol, Dr Phil Hammond has left a response to my letter and I in turn – along with some other correspondents – have replied.

Meanwhile, there has been excellent news from the ME Association who have launched an appeal for a metabolomics study using samples from the existing British biobank, which will include the severely affected. Psychiatrists will not be among the researchers…

You can find more information and details of how to donate here.

A Broader Picture

The last draft post I wrote about the MEGA petition was superseded by events before I finished it, so I’ll try and crack on with this one before the same thing happens again. Of course ‘cracking on’ in ME terms is still kind of slow but I’ll see if I can break the tortoise barrier.

So, what’s happened recently?

Well, we’ve been told that Peter White is retiring from research and will only be an ‘advisor’ to MEGA from now on. This perspective appears to be endorsed by the latest list of MEGA personnel, which no longer includes him. I can only give a muted ‘hurrah’ to this one. Advice is dangerous stuff and you can still do a lot of damage with it. His PACE Trial is swiftly becoming a watchword for bad science (see here, here, and here). Is he really the sort of ME ‘expert’ that either we patients or the MEGA team want around to guide this latest project?

It really is astonishing that MEGA apparently do still want him around after all he has done, and that they clearly expect patients to put up with it. It seems to me that if a passing Martian was given a brief course in English and the full facts, then even he (or she) would swiftly understand why we don’t want Prof White anywhere near this project. Why do the MEGA team not get this?

People with ME have been left on the scrapheap for decades. I myself have been ill for over thirty years. That’s over half my life. I have no children because of it. I lost my job. My life is very limited. Yet I am one of the relatively lucky ones. I can sit and tap at this keyboard – as long as I take plenty of rests to fend off the shoulder and eye pain and overall exhaustion. There are plenty of others who have to spend all their lives in bed, who can’t stand the light, who can’t even talk to their loved ones. We’ve all heard about Whitney Defoe whose birthday it recently was. He is not alone in his suffering. The vast majority of the severely ill are left to fend for themselves as best they can. Rarely do doctors come near them and they wouldn’t know what to do if they did.

And all this time, all these decades, so little research has been done, in large part because of the fairy story dreamed up by the PACE researchers and their associates: the fairy story that Continue reading “A Broader Picture”

#MillionsMissing

Who and what are the #MillionsMissing because of ME?

There are Millions Missing from employment

Millions Missing from relationships

Millions Missing from parenthood

Millions Missing from friends & relatives

Millions Missing from activities they love

Millions Missing from the world beyond a bedroom

Millions Missing from the world beyond a house

Millions Missing from the lives they should be leading because of ME

There are Millions of health professionals Missing knowledge of ME

There are Millions Missing from biomedical research funding for ME

Millions of patients are Missing correct diagnosis of ME

Millions of patients are Missing effective treatment for ME

Millions of patients are Missing any kind of medical attention

How many Millions more must be Missing before there is understanding?

How many Millions more must be Missing before there is treatment?

How many Millions more lives must be lost in waiting for there to be progress in fighting ME?

ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis – also known by the rather misleading name of chronic fatigue syndrome) is classified by the World Health Organisation as a neurological condition. The 2015 US Institute of Medicine Report concluded that it is ‘serious, complex, chronic, systemic disease’.

Some places to find out more about ME:

ME Association – patient support (UK)

Tymes Trust – support for young patients with ME (UK)

ME Research UK – biomedical research

#MEAction Net – has info on today’s #MillionsMissing demonstrations worldwide

You can also search for #MillionsMissing on Twitter

Thank you for reading

Out of the Blue

Well, I seem to have gone into PEM at the moment – due to too much blogging amongst other things. Fortunately I have a post for ME Awareness Month which I prepared earlier. In it, I have tried to describe how it can feel to be suddenly stricken down with this devastating condition. Please take a few minutes to read it, especially if you know very little about ME. It is not an easy illness to understand unless you have it yourself or are close to someone who does – and even then it can be bewildering. I have tried to open a small window on the experience of trying to adjust to this unwelcome visitor. (And if you’ve been wondering what PEM is, you’re about to find out…)

One day you start feeling ill. You don’t think very much about it at first. It’s just a bug and bugs go away, don’t they? But at the end of a week you’re not feeling any better. You wonder how long this is going to take. You’re getting a bit alarmed.

At the end of a fortnight, you’re positively worried. You have to phone work yet again to tell them you’re still not well. There’s a growing pressure to explain yourself but you’re just as baffled as everyone else. Your body’s supposed to repair itself, so why’s it not happening?

You also have to explain yourself to your family. They want to know when you’ll be well again. There are things to do that you can’t put on hold forever. Could you give them some idea of when you’ll be up to speed again? This illness of yours is getting inconvenient.

So you go to the doctor, hoping that he will know, but he doesn’t seem to have any more idea than you do. He gives you a sick note but even that seems grudging. Even he seems to think you ought to be fixing yourself by now. But isn’t that his job?

You try to start doing more – but the more you do, the worse you feel. You’re weak and in pain and something feels poisoned inside you. You’re starting to think that something is seriously wrong. Continue reading “Out of the Blue”

Closing the Door on Freedom

OK, here’s my take on the Freedom of Information Refusal Notice which came out a couple of days ago, not to be confused with the Tribunal outcome which (as I write) is expected imminently. Apologies for the fact that it’s about twice as long as it should be but I now have brain fog so I don’t have the intellect to edit it down! If you manage to read it, I hope you find it of interest. Me, I’m going to get some sleep….

The latest PACE Trial Freedom of Information Refusal Notice causes particular concern, not only for the PACE Trial and its implications for the future prospects of people with ME/CFS, but also for the Freedom of Information Act itself – and even for freedom of speech. The Notice incorporates twelve pages of repetitive arguments from QMUL (Queen Mary University of London, home of the PACE Trial) and three pages of what seem to me to be concise and clearly argued response from ‘the complainant’ (i.e. the guy who has made the request for information). Unfortunately, the Commissioner then goes on to reject the latter in favour of the former, apparently believing every word that QMUL have told him, i.e. that patients have launched a concerted campaign to discredit the PACE Trial by submitting a burdensome number of FOI requests in the desperate hope of finding something wrong with it and in the meantime bringing Lead PACE Investigator Prof Peter White and his staff to their knees under the resultant administrative load so that they aren’t able to do any more of their vital research. Or something like that. Their evidence is not so much a linear argument as a trip several times round the houses in the hope that if they say the same things often enough, some of them will eventually convince the Commissioner. Unfortunately, this strategy appears to have been successful.

The information the complainant requested relates to the data from the step test, an objective outcome measure which went unreported in the original PACE report but appeared in the form of a small scale graph in an appendix to one of the follow up studies. Continue reading “Closing the Door on Freedom”

Beyond the Bounds of NICE

A long time ago, in the early years of my ME, a small study in The Lancet suggested that intramuscular magnesium injections could be beneficial for CFS (as they called it). I took a copy of the study to show my GP, the late Dr Paul Moxon here in Leeds, UK, who read it and started injecting his ME patients in line with the study protocol. In a matter of a few weeks, I went from being largely housebound to up and about again. I made this transition gradually but it is worth recording, by the by, that any deconditioning which might have occurred while I was being looked after by my parents for several years did not present any significant impediment to my remobilisation. When my body got what it needed, I was able to function again. I was by no means cured but the improvement was substantial.

Since then, my ME has fluctuated and at one time I became largely housebound again. On that occasion, magnesium sulphate failed to pull me round – and I understand that subsequent trials of magnesium injections failed to replicate the success of that first study.

Nevertheless I am clear that magnesium injections helped me on that first occasion. I had several courses of six weekly injections. Each time, I began feeling better after the third week. The improvement would be sustained until a few weeks after the course but then tail off again. We eventually discovered that the best regime for me was an ongoing course of injections every three weeks. I kept this up for several years, stopping from time to time to see what would happen. Eventually I reached the stage Continue reading “Beyond the Bounds of NICE”

Action for ME and the PACE Trial

Action for ME has now joined the ME Association in asking for the release of data from the PACE Trial. This is a very encouraging development. Well done to all who wrote in – and to Clark Ellis whose blog encouraged us to do so.

Action for ME have supported PACE in the past and let down their members and ME patients in general very badly in the process, but they are now under largely new leadership, with a new CEO and new Medical Advisors. The contributions of CEO Sonya Chowdhury in the media have been noticably more robust in recent months and her profile page on their web site speaks of ‘a bold and ambitious agenda for change’.

There are those who will not forgive Action for ME for their past mistakes but, like it or not, they are frequently called upon for comment by the media and it seems to me that it is in the interests of people with ME to have an Action for ME that is on our side, which is stridently putting our case with our support, rather than one we perceive to be our enemy.

According to the Feb 12th statement by the AfME Board of Trustees, “The Board is continuing to consider Action for M.E.’s position on the PACE trial and related issues more widely, and will make a further statement in due course”. So it seems to me that this is a good time for ME patients to let them know what we would like this position to be. I have just sent them a message to this effect which I have pasted in below.

Please consider contacting Action for ME yourself, especially if you are a member. Feel free to reproduce my message, in part or in full, though if you have the spoons available to write in your own words, then so much the better. I don’t think the message has to be long or complicated: perhaps the shorter and more to the point it is the better. Not everyone is as long-winded as I am! I strongly suggest that you keep it polite and supportive though, however annoyed you maybe with AfME’s previous actions. Anger can get in the way of the message. The truth is powerful enough by itself.

My message follows:

Dear Ms Chowdhury – I am writing to thank you and Action for ME for joining your voice to those who are asking for the release of the PACE Trial data. Continue reading “Action for ME and the PACE Trial”

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