PACE – spoonseekerdotcom

Sadly, COVID-19 Could Just Be The Start Of Your Problems..

I know you have enough to worry about already with the pandemic situation the way it is, but there is something else important that you should know. The sad truth is that if you get COVID – 19 and survive, it could just be the start of your problems.

Ever since we first heard of this new virus, those of us who have experienced ongoing life-altering symptoms over many years following viral infection have feared that it would leave a great many more people in a similar condition to ourselves. It gives me no satisfaction whatsoever to report that this appears to be the way things are heading.

This thread from Reddit contains a distressing discussion between a great many previously fit and healthy young people who have all been left in a similar situation by COVID – 19, experiencing not the mild illness they were led to expect but a much more severe set of symptoms which, even after eight weeks or so, don’t seem to be going away.

As if this was not disturbing enough, they often find themselves treated with scepticism by doctors, who refuse to investigate their ongoing physical symptoms, referring them instead for talking therapies such as CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) which are more usually associated with mental health problems. Employers, friends, and even family can often be equally disbelieving. “My mother has basically disowned me,“ reports one young man of 33. These people are finding themselves in a living nightmare and cannot understand the lack of concern.

“Why is the media focusing on mortality figures for the old and infirm when it should be educating on the potential long-term health risks to all ages?” asks Golden_Pothos, who starts off the thread.

Well, since I started writing this post, several mainly well-informed articles about the potential long-term effects of COVID – 19 have appeared and let’s hope more will follow, but the broader answer is that the media have conspired for some time with successive governments in downplaying the potential severity of chronic illness, the existence of which appears to be regarded not so much as a human tragedy but an expensive inconvenience. The government’s official terminology is carefully chosen to reflect this perspective. So we find that people aren’t paid ‘incapacity benefit’ any more but ‘employment support allowance’. The implication of the name is that if an illness doesn’t kill you, you will make a full recovery. All you need is support until you are well enough to return to full employment. This is the climate in which it is okay for people with undeniably progressive conditions such as Motor Neurone Disease to be sent for benefit assessments in case they have got better.

Unfortunately this perspective from the politicians is supported by the decades old beliefs of the medical profession itself, which over a great many years has tended to treat any new and novel condition not with curiosity but with scepticism. Epilepsy, motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis, Parkinsons Disease, even stomach ulcers have been dismissed as ‘somatised’ conditions invented by the mind rather than real physical dysfunctions deserving investigation. In every case, as medical knowledge has progressed, these conditions have eventually been revealed as the physical problems they always were, but this hasn’t stopped the next new illness to come along being trivialised and dismissed in exactly the same way, the doctors seemingly unable to tolerate a situation in which real physical conditions exist which they don’t understand.

In 1955, following an infectious outbreak affecting 292 members of staff at the Royal Free Hospital in London, many of those affected experienced symptoms which waxed and waned over a long period and the term myalgic encephalomyelitis (or M.E. for short) was coined to describe the condition. To start with, it was acknowledged as a neurological condition affecting multiple bodily systems but a few years later, in 1970, two psychiatrists McEvedy and Beard, took a new look at the case and, without interviewing or examining any of the patients involved, reached the new conclusion that it had all been a case of “epidemic hysteria”, one of the principal arguments for which they cited as “the high attack rate in females compared to males”. So it was that M.E. joined the long list of conditions mentioned above, dismissed as “medically unexplained” because it was yet to be fully understood by medical science.

Skip ahead to 1984 and a similar realignment in perspective was performed in the USA following an outbreak at Incline Village, where the term M.E. was discarded in favour of CFS or ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’. This was a name apparently intended to trivialise the condition, for ‘fatigue‘ in no way comes close to describing the extreme exhaustion and multifarious other symptoms which those with M.E. report. The name change certainly spread confusion, with some believing the two conditions to be one and the same and others to be two separate entities. To make matters worse, CFS is widely confused with the term “chronic fatigue”, which is actually just a symptom present in many different conditions rather than the name of any specific one. Add to this a baffling number of different diagnostic criteria, some more usually interpreted as M.E. and others as CFS, with certain researchers apparently happy to come up with more variations from time to time just for the sake of it, and you find yourself with a very confused picture. It is hard to work out exactly how all these complications have come about. It is almost as though the powers that be were trying to deliberately muddy the waters to impede progress – but surely that not could not be the case?!

In the years since CFS was ‘invented’, a small group of British psychiatrists has made it very much their own, promoting the use of GET (graded exercise therapy) and CBT to treat it. They argue that patients are kept ill not by any ongoing disease process but by ‘abnormal illness beliefs’ and deconditioning due to inactivity. All they need is a course of graded exercise, with associated CBT to encourage it, and they will be up and about again.

Patients strongly reject this theory, many having submitted in good faith to just such a programme of graded exercise only to find that it brought about a long term and sometimes even permanent deterioration in their condition. Patients were therefore astounded when a large scale trial in 2011 claimed to prove that graded exercise and CBT were effective treatments for the condition.

PACE was a £5 million government Trial (funded in part – uniquely for a clinical trial – by the Department of and Work and Pensions). It is the most expensive piece of research into CFS/ME ever conducted and was intended to provide a definitive answer to the question of how the condition should be managed. At first, it seemed to have done exactly that but when first patients and then other scientists and health professionals looked more closely, the trial was found to have a great many flaws.

Just to state a few of them briefly:

The researchers made changes to their assessment criteria such that patients could be sick enough to enter the trial and then get worse yet still be classed as ‘recovered’ at the end of it.
The unblinded trial relied on subjective assessments of success, with objective assessments included in the original protocol (such as returning to work) being dismissed by the researchers as irrelevant or unreliable.
During the trial, participants received a newsletter extolling the virtues and success of the very therapies they were supposed to be assessing.
The researchers’ conflicts of interest were not divulged to participants when they entered the trial.
One of the criteria used for patient inclusion in the study was the Oxford definition, since dismissed in the US National Institutes of Health report into M.E. as harmful and in need of retirement.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of flaws but it gives you a flavour of the quality of the trial, which is now being taught in some US colleges as a text book example of how not to do science. Following the disclosure of these various issues, a number of letters have been sent to the editor of The Lancet (where the trial’s first paper was published), asking for an independent reanalysis of the study. The most recent of these was signed by over 150 health professionals, scientists, members of parliament, and patient organisations worldwide. In spite of the great weight of evidence in support of such reanalysis, no direct response to these letters has been received.

It seems astonishing that the PACE study is so flawed and has clearly been shown to be flawed but the editor of the supposedly distinguished journal which published it seems to feel no need to respond its critics. Similarly the PACE researchers themselves continue to act as though nothing has changed, still insisting that the PACE study is fine and they have done nothing wrong. How can this be explained?

It seems to be partly due to the power of the establishment here in the UK. The PACE researchers and their colleagues are highly regarded individuals. They are believed to be right by those in authority simply because of who they are. That they should finesse the figures the way they appear to have done is considered unthinkable, so their friends in power refuse to believe it is true. They certainly wouldn’t stoop so low as to look at the facts involved. We may think we have evidence-based medicine in this country but what we really have is eminence-based medicine, the fundamental principle of which is that eminent doctors cannot be wrong. It will take rather more than the truth to bring them down.

And then there is the all-important matter of economics. It is much cheaper to send patients for six week courses of CBT than it is to accept that we have on our hands a poorly understood organic illness requiring proper investigation, research and ultimately treatment. From the perspective of those in power, the country could not afford for PACE to be wrong, any more than we could afford for COVID – 19 to be a genuine threat, which is why our government pretended it wasn’t until the sheer weight of deaths forced them to change their minds. Deaths cannot be ignored but sadly chronic illness can, and it all too often is .

In recent years however, at least outside Britain, some advances have finally been made in the battle to address the true nature of M.E. The US Pathways to Prevention and Institute of Medicine reports, while not helpful in every respect, have recognised both the potential severity of the condition and the fact that it is not psychiatric – or psychological – in origin. The funds for research that were promised have been slow to follow but perhaps they will come in time.

Even in Britain, the NICE guidelines for the treatment of M.E. are being reassessed and there is a chance, albeit a slender one, that the recommendation of graded exercise will be withdrawn, just as it has in the US. If this happens, however, its proponents will not be in too much despair. They have long since had other plans in mind.

As long ago as 1997, they were were writing: “we regard chronic fatigue syndrome as important… because it provides an example for the positive management of medically unexplained illness in general.”

You can understand the appeal for them of unleashing their ‘expertise’ on this broader pool of patients. While only a relatively small proportion of people in the country have ME/CFS, a much larger number purportedly suffer with MUS. A key 2001 study by Nimnuan, Wessely, and Hotopf concluded that no less than 52% of patients who were newly referred to secondary care outpatient clinics had medically unexplained symptoms. Moreover, it has been quoted that people of working age with medically unexplained symptoms consume 10% of all NHS expenditure. Clearly if these figures are correct (which they almost certainly aren’t, but more about that later) the scope of MUS greatly exceeds that of the mere 0.25 million people in the country who are thought to suffer with M.E.

It will not be surprising then that new services for MUS are being rolled out to address this supposed need. The Guidelines for Commissioners of Services for Patients with MUS (2017) propose the instigation of MUS services in both hospitals and the community to manage patients with MUS, directing them away from costly referrals, medical investigations and interventions with long hospital stays, and instead giving them lower cost mental health treatments like CBT.

It might be argued that this will cause genuine physical illnesses to be overlooked by doctors, many of whom have already been persuaded that 50% of their patients aren’t really ill and are therefore preoccupied in trying to identify which ones they are, and it might be reasonably supposed that some patients will die as a result, but never mind: the end result will undoubtedly be less expensive.

Neurology attracts special attention in the new crusade against MUS, having been identified as having one of the highest proportions (at 62%) of patients with MUS in the study by Nimnuan, Wessely, and Hotopf. Patients attending with neurological symptoms which do not accord with any recognised pathology are therefore extremely likely to be diagnosed with FND, short for ’functional neurological disorder’ and very much the diagnosis du jour. They will then be referred to one of the new FND clinics that have opened across the country, where they will undergo CBT and also most likely be investigated for deep-seated underlying trauma, a therapy which patients with M.E. have mainly been spared but which is currently gaining in popularity. These patients, who like those with M.E., may well have been waiting some years for a diagnosis, will be reassured that their illness is being taken seriously at last – after all, the word ‘functional’ makes it sound like it is real, does it not? But in fact, the opposite is the case. The corridors of social media currently ring with frantic arguments between patients who believe that FND is a ‘proper diagnosis’ and those who know that it isn’t.

Divide and rule.

The MUS offensive is being pursued on many different fronts, including that of IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies), the programme originally intended to ensure that patients received therapies for mental health problems such as anxiety and depression which all too often had gone untreated. Its extension to cover long-term conditions and MUS has raised concerns, however, and an audit by Michael J Scott has suggested that the therapies used (principally CBT) come nowhere near achieving the 50% curative rate which has been claimed for them.

As essentially the same group of researchers is involved, it is perhaps not surprising that the work on MUS appears to be full of similar flaws to those which beset the PACE Trial. Take the Nimnuan, Wessely, and Hotopf study mentioned earlier. In a previous article on this blog, I made some suggestions about why the numbers of patients with MUS might well have been over-estimated (please scroll down to the paragraph beginning “Is all this really true?” ) and a recent article by a patient argues that account has not been taken of the substantial amounts of misdiagnosis which were involved.

Meanwhile, David Tuller, the US public health lecturer who has done so much to publicise the shortcomings of the PACE Trial, has been looking at a study of CBT for IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) this having been identified as a form of MUS. Tuller points out that the IBS Symptom Severity Scale used to assess the effects of CBT compared to ‘treatment as usual’ in the study required a difference of 50 points or more to be considered clinically significant. In fact, only one of the two types of CBT which were tested in the study achieved symptom improvement in excess of 50 in the 12 months follow up, and neither exceeded 50 in the long term assessment after 24 months. In spite of these results, the use of CBT for IBS has been heralded as a great success.

Tuller has also highlighted a gross and continually perpetuated error concerning the overall impact of MUS. A 2010 study by Bermingham et al concluded that MUS accounted for around 10% of NHS expenditure on people of working age. However, Professor Chew- Graham, one of the leading proponents of psychological therapies for MUS, quoted this a little differently, stating that people of working age with MUS accounted for 10% of total NHS expenditure. Unfortunately, this misreading has since been repeated many times over by Professor Chew-Graham and others such that the impact of MUS on the NHS budget has been grossly exaggerated in influential places over a long period of time.

In a recent Skype talk to the Sheffield ME Group, Tuller recounted his attempts to get some of these mistakes corrected and the editors’ lack of urgency or concern to get them changed. It is as if the facts don’t matter to them, as if they are only going through the motions of proving their case. You can understand how they might start to develop that mindset. It does indeed seem that those in power are so desperate for easy, cheap answers to difficult questions that they will soak up any old nonsense as long as the price tag is right.

It is too early to say how many of those with post-viral symptoms from COVID-19 will go on to develop M.E, but in a climate like this, is there any hope that they will be taken seriously if they do? Is it not much more likely that they too will be trivialised and fobbed off with CBT, that they too will be pushed into graded exercise, only to find that it makes their condition worse? In the aftermath of the pandemic, there will be too many other concerns to address, and less money to spare than ever. It seems too much to hope that those in power will come to their senses and take a proper, responsible look at the claims of the snake oil salesmen who are taking them for a ride, meanwhile condemning so many people with overlooked physical illness to lives of relentless ill health.

Notes:

1) It is frequently claimed that people with M.E. do not want to be given a mental health diagnosis because of the stigma involved. In actual fact, they simply do not want to be given an inappropriate diagnosis. There is widespread evidence of ongoing organic pathology in M.E. but none to support the deconditioning theory of the graded exercise proponents.

2) In particular, research has shown that people with M.E. have an abnormal response to exercise, producing excess lactic acid and, in a cardiopulmonary exercise test, uniquely performing less well on the second day of exercise.

3) You can find a summary of what biomedical research tells us about M.E. here.

4) ‘Medically Unexplained Symptoms’ are not necessarily unexplainable. They simply have not been explained by our current state of medical knowledge and testing ability. To assume they are therefore a mental health issue is simply that, an assumption. There is no evidence to support it.

5) I do not mean to imply that there is anything wrong with CBT therapy per se. I am sure it can be an effective treatment for mental health problems. There is no evidence, however, that it is a universal panacea, which is how it is currently being touted.

The Vale of Strange

The Shop on Peculiar Hill Cover

You may wonder what that picture’s doing here and what that title ‘The Vale of Strange’ is about. It should all become clear as this post progresses. But I think you will agree that ‘The Vale of Strange’ sounds like a fair description of where we find ourselves when we’re trying to argue the case for a better deal for people with M.E. When we’re trying our best to set out the facts as clearly and concisely as possible, yet finding that many of those in positions of power seem to have little regard for the truth, preferring to stick with what their colleagues in command tell them they must believe, rather than study the evidence for themselves.

Writing here back in June about the review of the NICE Guidelines for ME/CFS, I said “it’s anyone’s guess what will happen when the interminable review is finally completed in 2020 – though the smart punters would probably put their money on CBT and GET remaining in favour”.

Unfortunately subsequent events have suggested that those ‘smart punters’ would be right. The choice of personnel for the committee which will review the guidelines, including as it does many who appear to be wedded to the use of CBT and GET, while omitting many of those who hold the opposite view, suggests that I was being unduly optimistic when I spoke of it being ‘anyone’s guess what will happen’. When you see an old, dilapidated truck heading for the edge of a cliff, controlled by a committee of drivers, about half of whom want the vehicle to maintain its present course, you don’t have to think too carefully to predict what happens next.

Of course, there are some excellent people on the committee; there are just not enough of them. There are, as I say, far too many who have supported GET and CBT over the years, who have bought into the unproven, ill-founded biopsychosocial theory of ME. Some people, including at least one voice I usually respect, have tried to excuse the inclusion of these GET apologists on the grounds of the need for ‘balance’. But what kind of balance would this be?

Just to recap what most of you reading this will already be well aware of: CBT and GET, as referred to in PACE, are potentially harmful therapies which emerge from the unproven biopsychosocial theory of M.E., while PACE, the largest trial purporting to support this approach, has been widely debunked and discredited. A series of letters have been sent to The Lancet, the Journal which published the Trial, the latest signed by almost two hundred scientific and medical organisations and prominent individuals, all calling for an independent reanalysis of the trial. It is perhaps an example of the arrogance of those who consider themselves to be part of a clique whose pedigree places it above such matters as truth and falsehood, right and wrong, that they have not felt obliged to respond.

And given our current state of knowledge about M.E., the only reason that a NICE Guideline committee split between those for and against GET can be said to represent ‘balance’ is because those who have lost the argument refuse to accept defeat.

Deep down somewhere, even the PACE team know that the data has been reassessed, the argument is over and they have lost. They know that an independent reassessment will come out against them, which is why they are making sure their friends will not allow it. Not only have they lost the argument, they have – in a metaphorical sense – thrown their toys out of the buggy and are sitting there sulking. But in such a way that isn’t obvious to those in the ruling clique who have never taken the time and trouble to understand about PACE.

The PACE apologists don’t engage with the facts any more. They make statements which appear to do so, yet they are simply repeating the same old tired phrases which lost the argument last time around. Michael Sharpe’s performances on Twitter have been a perfect example of this: making a statement here and there, cherry picking which tweets to engage with and which to ignore; not submitting any kind of joined up, reasoned argument, just giving a studied impression of what he hopes will seem like a reasonable man.

To talk about ‘balance’ in the NICE committee is going along with this charade of pretending the argument isn’t over. It gives the impression of representing both sides of a finely balanced discussion. But this isn’t how things are. To the extent that it is a balance, it is only between right and wrong, between truth and lies, between the proven and the groundless. That, surely, is no kind of balance at all.

* * *

The patient community have made impressive efforts to make known their dissatisfaction with the proposed personnel for the guidelines committee. Among all the other many patient advocates, I was invited to take part and I can only apologise for my total lack of response. The reason for that will become clear very shortly. Obviously, I am coming late to the party on this and a lot of representations have already been made, but it is worth my mentioning a new initiative by M.E. Action, encouraging patients to send a Christmas card to NICE staff telling them why those who have championed the ideas and treatments that have harmed the community should not be writing the guideline that will influence treatment for decades to come. I shall certainly be participating in this and I encourage you to do the same.

So what have I been doing the last few months? I think the best way to answer that is to say ‘something else’.

One of the most wearing things about being an M.E, patient advocate (for want of a better word) is the need for constant repetition, of having to make the same valid points over and over again in the hope that someone will listen. This can get to you after a while, and in recent times I have tried to balance writing this blog with writing other things, just for the sake of my sanity, which is why there have been fewer posts this year than previously.

One of the things I did was to go back to writing some children’s fantasy stories which I had previously put to one side due to the disinclination of British literary agents to have anything to do with them. Now I decided I would try self-publishing them, and so was happily surprised when a few months ago, by a serendipitous turn of events which I won’t go into right now, a small American publisher, Journey Fiction, offered me a contract for the books…

The title of the series, you may now have guessed, is The Vale of Strange and the first volume, The Shop on Peculiar Hill, was published on 1 December. Should you be interested, you can find out more about the books on Amazon or at www.grimlydarkwood.com They’re best described as humorous adventure stories and are aimed at the age range 8 to 12 but I’m doing my best to convince adults that they will like them too. Indeed, I’m happy to say that most of the adults who’ve tried the first book do seem to like it. The Shop on Peculiar Hill is available in both paperback and electronic form at Amazon and other online retailers. Just search for my pseudonym ‘Grimly Darkwood’ or follow these links: Amazon UK Amazon.com US

So that’s why this post is entitled The Vale of Strange and why there’s a rather strange picture up at the head of it. I hope you will forgive me for writing about these books on this occasion – I won’t make a habit of hijacking the blog in this way. In any case, most of my writing and campaigning about M.E., the blog included, is going to have to be put on hold – or at least on go-slow – for the time being. There’s no way I can both do that and write and publish fiction, not and maintain the level of health – or more accurately, ill health – that I have at the moment. Yet fiction is something I’ve wanted to do all my life, so I don’t want to pass up on this new and unexpected opportunity l’ve been given.

I would like to be able to tell you that the book is about M.E., perhaps a metaphorical quest to slay an insidious dragon, but I’m afraid it isn’t, not ostensibly. Nevertheless, it’s a children’s fantasy story so it will never be a million miles away from the antics of those who believe that patients shown to be made demonstrably worse by exercise can exercise their way back to health. The story also involves a population being very misled by the authorities about a matter which could have a serious impact on their health and well being, so some people might reach the conclusion that it *is* about ME after all.

If you would like to take a look at the book to see if you agree, or indeed for any other reason, then of course I shall be be delighted. You can buy the book and read the reviews at the links I gave above. Or if you prefer to ‘try before you buy’, there are free sample chapters here. Do write and tell me what you think, and if you are able to leave a review on Amazon, then so much the better.

As for this blog, I’m hoping to do one final post here to round up my series on ‘medically unexplained symptoms’, one which makes an important connection I feel needs attention. After that, perhaps occasional posts will be possible. We shall see…

I’m pleased to observe that the ME community is more active and organised than ever before so I don’t feel that one more blogger will be missed all that much. Even so, I do feel guilty to leave others to shoulder the yoke of repetition that has started to drive me so crazy. I’m just glad there are those of you who are willing to take it on, including those who were doing it long before I arrived and will be doing it after I ‘m gone. Tom Kindlon is a name which springs to mind but there are many others, typing away day after day, week after week, matching the intransigent determination of those who have lied – and continue to lie – about M.E. with their own intransigent repetition of the truth.

It’s a hard slog, but I’m sure that truth will triumph in the end.

Letter to Professor Watt of MRC

This letter from Professor Fiona Watt of the Medical Research Council in support of the PACE Trial appeared a few days ago in response to the Times article about the growing pressure on The Lancet concerning the trial:

CHRONIC FATIGUE

Sir, Further to your report “Call for review of ‘flawed’ ME research”(Aug 21), as funders of the Pace trial we reject the view that the scientific evidence provided by the trial for using cognitive behavioural theory and managed exercise in the treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome (also known as ME) was unsound. The Pace trial was funded following expert peer review, was overseen by an independent steering committee, and its published findings have also been independently peer-reviewed. Other research groups have drawn similar conclusions. Chronic fatigue syndrome/ME remains a priority for the Medical Research Council (MRC), and it is important that researchers are not discouraged from working on the disease because of concerns that they could be subject to the level of hostility that Pace researchers have experienced. Medical research can only flourish when there is mutual respect between all parties.

Professor Fiona Watt Executive chairwoman, Medical Research Council

There have been other responses from patients. Here is mine, which I decided to send directly to Prof Watt.

Maybe she will see it. Maybe she will read it. Maybe she will do as I ask! I’ve sent it anyhow. You don’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket…

Dear Professor Watt,

Like many patients with M.E. I was surprised and disappointed by your letter to The Times wholeheartedly supporting the PACE trial. There are so many misconceptions in the letter that it is clear that you have not investigated this matter yourself but have – apparently- assumed that what the PACE authors tell you about it is correct and what patients tell you is not. I can only assume that this is because they are doctors and we are merely patients.

Yet you say in your letter that ‘medical research can only flourish when there is mutual respect between all parties’. I would certainly not disagree with that. Please then show patients the respect of being open to the possibility that what we (and indeed many distinguished researchers and other informed parties) say about PACE may actually be correct.

I am not asking you to take us at our word, but please look into the matter yourself instead of simply believing what you are told by the PACE authors and their friends. It will not take you long. I have provided a few references at the end of this letter which you will find useful. For the sake of the patients you say you wish to respect, please take the trouble to do this.

Thank you,

Useful references:

Rethinking the Treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome – A Reanalysis and Evaluation of Findings from a Recent Major Trial of Graded Exercise and CBT by Wilshire et al. – Jan 2018 (A comprehensive re-evaluation of PACE following the release of data from the Freedom of Information Act Tribunal.)

Journal of Health Psychology Vol 22 No.9 Aug 2017 – A Special Issue on PACE. “On the basis of this Special Issue, readers can make up their own minds about the merits and demerits of the PACE Trial,” writes Editor David F Marks.

A letter to The Lancet signed by over a hundred scientists, clinicians, academics, MPs and other experts plus over sixty local, national, and international patient organisations, calling for an independent re-analysis of PACE and setting out the reasons why.

The August 2016 PACE Trial Freedom of Information Tribunal Judgement has useful information about so called hostility to PACE researchers, an unfounded allegation which your letter unfortunately perpetuates.

Two notes relating to this issue:

Allegations were made at the Tribunal by a representative of the PACE proponents that ME patients, described as ‘activists’ were ‘borderline sociopathic and psychopathic’ and posed ‘a serious threat of violence to trial participants and researchers’ but the Commissioner described these as ‘wild speculations’ which did the representative ‘no credit’ (see pages 22 and 36). PACE researcher Prof Chalder accepted that ‘there had been no threats made either to researchers or participants’ The Commissioner stated that the ‘assessment of activist behaviour was grossly exaggerated. The only actual evidence was that an individual at a seminar had heckled Prof Chalder.’ (see page 40)
Your letter also suggests that researchers might be ‘discouraged from working on the disease because of concerns that they could be subject to the level of hostility that PACE researchers have experienced’. The idea that researchers are being discouraged in this way is another often repeated misconception which seems to be intended to vilify patients. Working for the MRC, you will be fully aware of how little funding M.E. has received over the years. Nevertheless there is research going on worldwide, strongly supported by patients and often funded by them. (Many of these researchers are critical of PACE and have signed the letter to The Lancet requesting its independent reassessment – see above.) Patients do however object – in the form of letters such as this and other peaceful means – to the squandering of funds on poorly conducted research such as PACE, money which is desperately needed for high quality biomedical research into the condition.

Probing the Holes in MUS

This is the second in a new series of posts about medically unexplained symptoms (MUS). The first of these, A Morass of MUS, appeared last time. However, I first looked at medically unexplained symptoms over two years ago in a post called Medically Unexplained Assumptions. In this, I travelled all the way back to the nineteenth century (just like a character from Netflix) to take a look at the case of the unfortunate Mr Le Log, who suffered memory loss, paralysis and seizures after being knocked to the ground by a speeding carriage.

The accident was unfortunate of course but what made things worse for Le Log was that he had no external head injuries. He most likely had internal ones, but at that time medical science did not recognise the existence of such injuries as they didn’t have the technology to detect them. As far as the doctor who examined him was concerned, therefore, there couldn’t possibly be any physical reason for Le Log’s symptoms of memory loss etc. The doctor could only conclude that they were the result of ‘hysteria’.

In the many years since then, similar assumptions have been made about many other presentations of symptoms, such as those relating to epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and Parkinsons disease, to name but a few, yet subsequent advances in technology have revealed that these conditions too are really physical in nature and have nothing to do with ‘hysteria’ at all.

The habit of assuming that any condition which is not understood by doctors must be a rooted in mental health continues to this day, however. It has been shown to be wrong over and over again, and you would have thought that gradually, over the years, it would have fallen into disuse. But no. The medical profession continue to insist that they already know everything there is to know about illness, so any set of symptoms they don’t understand can’t possibly be a ‘proper’ disease – this in spite of the fact that they really know they don’t know everything, and are happy enough to admit this in other contexts.

The word ‘hysterical’ is rarely used these days, but plenty of other names have come along to replace it in describing such conditions: medically unexplained symptoms (MUS), which we are using here, is one of them, as are the terms ‘functional‘ and ‘somatised’. ‘Functional’ is especially misleading, I think, as it sounds like it is describing a physical fault in a system. (You could almost think that doctors were deliberately setting out to mislead their patients…)

Far from falling into disuse, these terms seem to be gaining in popularity at the moment. As I mentioned last time, up to 45% of GP appointments and half of all new hospital visits are now considered to be due to MUS. This really is an extraordinarily large number, and new MUS services are being encouraged into existence to deal with it all. The IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies) scheme, originally intended to address anxiety and depression, is now being extended to deal with MUS (and long term conditions). Nimnuan, Wessely, and Hotopf, authors of the paper “Medically Unexplained Symptoms -an epidemiological study in seven specialties” which seems to have been the source of the ‘50% of hospital visits’ figure, announce rather grandly: “It is now time to acknowledge that the management of medically unexplained symptoms is one of the important tasks facing the specialist in internal medicine – indeed, in some clinics, it constitutes the majority of the work.”

Is all this really true? Is the vast mountain of MUS that Wessely et al have brought to our attention real? Sir Simon Wessely’s presence amongst the authors of the ‘seven specialties’ paper was bound to increase my doubts about this, especially bearing in mind his favourable opinion of the calamitous PACE trial. So I was interested to take a look at how he and his colleagues arrived at their figures for the prevalence of MUS .

I found I had a number of concerns:

The authors explain the study as follows:

“Medically unexplained symptoms were defined as any current principal somatic complaint reported by patients for which no definite medical diagnosis could be found by physical examination and appropriate investigation… The physician’s opinion was determined by the final diagnosis stated in the clinical case notes. If the physicians gave a diagnosis of “functional,” or continued to defer the diagnosis because of no detected abnormality, we considered these as indicating that the symptoms were medically unexplained… Case notes were reviewed to ascertain the final diagnosis approx three months after the initial visit.”

So in other words, if the doctor hasn’t come up with an explanation for a symptom in three months, then it is officially “medically unexplained” as far as this research is concerned. The problem for me here is that, in my experience, most diagnoses take longer than three months to obtain, so this three month cut-off seems unreasonable and likely to exaggerate the extent of the MUS problem.

The researchers developed a ‘system review questionnaire’ for use in the study but I haven’t been able to find it online. They describe it as follows:

“It consists of 11 main symptoms, which correspond to 13 recognised functional somatic syndromes, with 25 additional symptoms, including somatic symptoms, sleep, and psychological complaints. A total of 27 individual somatic symptoms were enquired about.“

I don’t find that all that easy to interpret, so it’s a shame we don’t have a copy of the questionnaire. But the impression I get is that if a patient has at least one of those 27 individual somatic symptoms which has not been ‘explained’ by the doctor by the time the 3 months are up, then they will be categorised as having medically unexplained symptoms. In my opinion, however, it is a natural part of the human condition to have one or two aches and pains and other bodily malfunctions of unknown origin at any one time. So it seems to me that once again these figures will be inflated. (If you would like to take a look at this for yourself and see if you think I am representing it correctly, then please do so. The full paper is freely available online.)

As quoted above, the 11 “main symptoms“ correspond to “13 recognised functional somatic syndromes”. Not all of these are named in the paper but three of them are mentioned in the introduction: IBS, fibromyalgia, and – you guessed it – CFS. Well the World Health Organisation classes IBS as ‘a disease of the intestines’, and fibromyalgia as a ‘soft tissue disorder’. They have nothing to say about CFS but myalgic encephalomyelitis is a classed as a neurological condition of course and as the Department of Health apparently believes ME and CFS to be one and the same, a strong case could be made for CFS to be also classed as neurological. I can only presume that a patient presenting with the symptoms of any one of the ’13 recognised functional somatic syndromes’ mentioned would be categorised as ‘unexplained’ by the researchers. However, as the three ‘syndromes’ mentioned are in fact officially recognised as ‘somatic’ (ie physical) conditions, a case could be made that once again the number of patients with MUS are being inflated – and we haven’t even looked at the remaining so called ‘functional somatic syndromes’ yet. The chances are that some of those aren’t really ‘functional’ either. Is it reasonable of the government to recognise medical conditions as physical yet at the same time class them as MUS in the supporting statistics for a major initiative to expand services for such conditions? I don’t think it is.

So where does this leave us exactly? While this isn’t all as clear as I would like it to be, I feel there’s enough here to place a big question mark against these figures. If I was relying on them to support a substantial government initiative, I think I’d want to take a very good look at them first. Likewise the supporting figures for primary care. Has anyone done so? I wonder. They may well have simply relied on peer review to validate the research, but that didn’t work so well for PACE, did it?

While we’re on the subject of diagnosis: last time, I drew attention to some advice for GPs which seemed to suggest they should place undue focus on the mental health of patients presenting with physical symptoms in order not to miss any cases of MUS. If you’ve read the second of my original posts on MUS, ‘Unexplained, Misdiagnosed, Untreated‘, you’ll also know that MUS has been a substantial factor in the misdiagnosis of rare conditions, sometimes causing catastrophic delays in treatment. But there are also other concerns, most notably a gaping logistical gap which appears to lie at the very centre of the MUS strategy as it is described in the Guidelines for Commissioners (the very document which, supposedly, is supposed to kickstart the new range of services for MUS into action).

As I mentioned last time, MUS are described in these guidelines as: ‘bodily complaints for which adequate examination does not reveal sufficient explanatory structural or other specified pathology’. A similar definition was used by Wessely et al in their paper above. All this may seem reasonable enough at first glance, but if you think about it more carefully, you might start to wonder ‘how sufficient is ‘sufficient’ and ‘how adequate is ‘adequate’? As far as I can tell, the guidelines give no guidance on that. They do however warn against the danger of over-investigation. They say:

“Patients are often subjected to repeated diagnostic investigations, and unnecessary and costly referrals and interventions”

and

“Doctors can cause harm by pursuing inappropriate investigations in their efforts to discover the cause of symptoms. Such procedures can exacerbate anxiety. Over-investigation may cause unnecessary damage to healthy tissues and lead to over-treatment, including unknecessary surgery, with all its complications, and in extreme cases more invasive treatments such as urinary catheters and tube feeding, of various types. Doctors may also prescribe unnecessary medication that can lead to side effects, and addiction.”

Forgive me, but that last paragraph reads like a text book example of catastrophising, something I am led to believe is more typical of a MUS patient than a set of NHS guidelines. I suppose a doctor would explain it as follows: “I’m sorry Mr Smith but it’s really best if we don’t give you a gastroscopy to investigate your stomach pains or you’re very likely to end up in bed with several organs accidentally removed, being drip fed unnecessary medication. What would you like us to give you instead to help with your constant agonising pain: CBT or mindfulness?”

I’m not sure this is really striking a realistic balance between ‘adequate examination‘ and ‘over-investigation’. It’s more like freezing to death for fear of catching fire if you light a match.

The truth is that the more adequate the examination, the more likely it is to find sufficient pathology if it is present. But the guidelines stress again and again the need for less investigation. Is there not a danger of an enormous void opening up here, a void into which the physically ill may fall? Those whose pathology is overlooked by tests which turn out not to have been so adequate after all? Always assuming, of course, that they even managed to get a test. ‘Repeated tests’ seem to be especially frowned upon by the guidelines, so if you’ve been tested before, you may not get another chance. The impression given, rightly or wrongly, is that the NHS will no longer cater for patients who develop pathology for which they’ve previously been tested. Unless you want CBT of course, in which case your brand new local MUS clinic will be happy to help.

This is especially concerning in the light of the guidelines’ acceptance that ‘MUS may be caused by physiological disturbance, emotional problems or pathological conditions which have not yet been diagnosed’. (My italics.) For if that is indeed the case, there’s a problem, isn’t there? With all this desire to avoid investigation, how are these conditions which have not yet been diagnosed going to get diagnosed – especially once a patient has been judged to have MUS? I can find no answer to this important question in the guidelines. But it is a life-threatening question and surely one which requires an answer….

I’d like to complete this post with a brief overview of the current situation, as regards both MUS and IAPT. The underlying principles behind the original IAPT scheme seem to me to be praiseworthy: delivering therapies for mental health problems such as anxiety and depression which previously all too often went untreated. There are concerns, however, especially regarding the expansion of IAPT to include MUS and long term conditions. The official guide to this new ‘care pathway’, for instance, cites CFS as a MUS condition, repeating the error from the ‘seven specialties’ paper but this time in a government document; while IAPT as a whole is also under scrutiny following an audit by Michael J Scott which suggests that the therapies used (principally CBT) come nowhere near achieving the 50% curative rate which is claimed for them. This concern is covered in detail in the latest issue of the Journal of Health Psychology (ed David F Marks).

As for MUS, if we stand back and look at the overall picture of that, is there even greater cause for concern? Not only must we have the same worries about the efficacy of the therapies, surely questions must be asked sooner or later about the vast numbers which are supposed to be affected by this phenomenon and the effect on the diagnosis of physical/somatic conditions if undue emphasis is placed on it.

Put in a single sentence, the question is this: do we have a situation where a massive new initiative is being rolled out to promote therapies with exaggerated efficacy for the purpose of combating an imaginary epidemic, at the same time encouraging doctors to overlook and under-investigate genuine pathologies?

Only asking…

A Morass of MUS

As you are probably aware, here in the UK, NICE are currently engaged in the lengthy process of revising their guidelines for ME/CFS. The current guidelines recommend the use of GET (graded exercise therapy) and associated CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), the latter being used in this case to persuade patients that GET is a good idea.

Patients have every right to be sceptical. Numerous patient surveys have shown that many report being made worse by GET. Many patients end up housebound or even bedbound as a result, sometimes permanently so. Research such as that by VanNess et al has provided evidence of why such exercise is harmful, while PACE, the most influential study purporting to support the use of GET, has been thoroughly debunked and discredited – most comprehensively by Wilshire et al. In the US, the recommendations for GET and CBT have been withdrawn in view of the latest information.

In view of all this, a disinterested bystander might be forgiven for assuming that withdrawal of support for CBT and GET will be close to a foregone conclusion when NICE eventually complete their review. Indeed, they might well agree with those patient groups who have asked NICE to remove the recommendation for these therapies from their guidelines at once before anyone else gets harmed.

As it happens, however, the latter request has not been successful and it’s anyone’s guess what will happen when the interminable review is finally completed in 2020 – though the smart punters would probably put their money on CBT and GET remaining in favour.

There’s a number of reasons for this.

Though anyone who takes the trouble to look at the evidence will see that PACE has indeed been thoroughly debunked, the Trial’s authors have adopted the policy of pretending that no significant flaws have been uncovered and that everything will be fine if they keep on insisting they’ve done nothing wrong. Close to the heart of the British establishment as they are, this policy has served them pretty well so far and we can’t assume that NICE won’t be taken in too.
If NICE withdraw their recommendation for CBT and GET, what therapies can they offer instead? There has been so little biomedical research in recent times – due in large part to the unhelpful influence of PACE itself – that no substantial advances in treatment seem likely to arrive in time for the completion of the review. So if NICE withdraw CBT and GET, they might leave doctors with nothing at all to offer – and doctors won’t like that.
If CBT and GET are withdrawn, what will the poor old NHS CFS Clinics do? CBT and GET are their stock in trade. Without them, how could they survive? Will NICE want to trigger wholesale redundancies in the CFS industry? Probably not.

So the only sensible course of action from the point of view of patients is for NICE to withdraw their support for CBT and GET (preferably right away) but when you look at the self-interest of so many of the professionals involved, it’s a very different story.

On the other hand…

Taking a broader perspective, perhaps the closure of the CFS clinics wouldn’t be such a terrible blow for the pro-GET lobby after all. It may well be that they have Plan B in place already….

…Because whether by accident or design, the new MUS (medically unexplained symptoms) clinics which are being rolled out across the country in a major new initiative couldn’t have come at a better time for them. If NICE comes out against CBT and GET and the CFS clinics fail, then the MUS clinics will provide a natural place for their staff to go. It’ll be the same sort of work but with a much larger clientele. Up until now, they‘ve only had people with CFS to work on. Now the sky will be the limit.

MUS is a far more powerful dustbin diagnosis than CFS ever was. Even Esther Crawley couldn’t come up with figures to claim that people with CFS represent more than 2% of the population. With MUS, on the other hand, you are talking about a substantial proportion of the people who come through a doctor’s door.

According to the figures in ‘The Guidelines for Commissioners of Services for Patients with MUS (Feb 2017)’, up to 20% of people who go to see their GP really have MUS, while for secondary care, the proportion ranges from 39% for dentistry up to a staggering 66% for top-scoring gynaecology. Two things are especially worthy of notice here:

Should it surprise us that gynaecology produced the highest proportion of patients believed to have MUS? (Not really. Women have suffered such prejudice for centuries of course. The ‘high attack rate in females compared with males’ among patients in the Royal Free outbreak was cited by Beard and McEvedy as part of their argument for labelling ME as ‘mass hysteria’ back in 1970 for instance ) and
Those extraordinary figures for secondary care come from a 2001 study by – who would have guessed it? – S Wessely et al.

Before I go on, I should explain what MUS is in case you don’t know. The acronym stands for ‘medically unexplained symptoms’ which according to ‘The Guidelines for Commissioners of Services for Patients with MUS’ can be described as ‘bodily complaints for which adequate examination does not reveal sufficient explanatory structural or other specified pathology’. Or to put it another way, they are symptoms which don’t have an obvious physical explanation. Doctors don’t understand them and they don’t show up in tests. For people with ME, this will already sound eerily familiar.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists’ leaflet on MUS explains as follows:

‘When something in our body doesn’t feel right, there usually is a bodily or ‘physical’ cause – stomach problems may be due to an infection, or palpitations may be due to a heart problem.

‘What if there is no physical explanation for your physical symptoms? We can often understand and explain such symptoms when we look at how our thoughts, feelings and stresses can affect our bodies.

‘But – to say that a bodily symptom is not just physical is not the same as saying they are all in the mind. Medically unexplained symptoms aren’t “all in the mind”, but neither are they all in the body. To understand them we have to think about how the mind and the body work together.’

But in spite of this ‘a bit in the mind and a bit in the body’ description, the suggested therapies turn out to be all psychological in nature: talking therapies and anti-depressants. Oh yes, and graded exercise. You may not find this surprising.

I first looked at MUS in my post ‘Medically Unexplained Assumptions’ a couple of years ago. You may find that post of interest. Back then, I was interested in delving into the origins of the medical profession’s attitude to ME. Little did I realise that MUS was about to come back into fashion on such an extraordinary scale.

Looking at the various documents about MUS that I have been collecting over recent months, I am struck by what a massive thing it appears to be. I have already written this post then scrapped it and started again several times over. I am anxious not to exaggerate or be alarmist yet it seems to me that unless I appear to do so, I am understating the challenge which MUS presents.

Those figures I quoted above from Wessely’s study give an idea of the extraordinary number of patients which the medical authorities seem to believe are affected by this mysterious entity MUS, yet when I turn to the NHS Choices website, I see they’re going even higher. They’re attributing ‘up to 45% of GP appointments and half of all new hospital visits’ to MUS. If the trend goes on, there will soon be more people with MUS than with what I shall call (for the want of anything better) ‘accredited illnesses’.

How do the authorities intend to deal with this burgeoning problem?

The ‘Guidelines for Commissioners’ booklet proposes a hospital MUS service as part of the solution. Apparently this will:

‘redirect patients from the emergency department, expedite discharges from medical and surgical wards, and offer effective interventions. These activities should help avoid unnecessary medical investigations and interventions, reduce length of hospital stays, and prevent frequent referrals and readmissions. Services must include psychological therapists who would provide evidence-based MUS interventions in a timely manner. The therapists would be sufficiently familiar with physical healthcare to be credible to patients – many of whom may not accept a psychological component to their physical symptoms and therefore the need for psychological therapy.’

So, in the future, it seems that your local hospital MUS service will be standing by at all times to whisk you away from the parts of the hospital where you might get medical assistance and take you somewhere nice and quiet where you can focus on the important business of working out which psychological therapy you need. I’m afraid I do not find this reassuring.

Imagine a crowded A&E department on a Saturday night. Imagine the pressure to cut down waiting times and the shortage of hospital beds. The pressure on staff to dismiss a quota of patients as MUS and bundle them into a side room for CBT is going to be enormous. It’s certainly an easier option than finding something physically wrong and fixing them And indeed, will there be a fine to pay if they don’t don’t come up with the specified quota of MUS patients for the evening? A specified quota which, to take the figure from NHS Choices, would be no less than fifty per cent.

And what are we supposed to make of this bit: ‘the therapists would be sufficiently familiar with physical healthcare to be credible to patients’? Am I wrong in getting the impression here that these psychotherapists are going to pretend to be doctors or something? What are they going to do: hang stethoscopes round their necks? Isn’t that illegal? At the very least, this seems to me to be an example of a national NHS document deliberately advising health professionals to mislead patients. Or am I being unfair?

Now, I can imagine why doctors might want to bear this MUS thing in mind for a small minority of their patients, but the guidelines seem to suggest it should be a primary consideration all the time. Look at this excerpt from another piece of advice for doctors, this time aimed at primary care. The Treatment of Medically Unexplained Symptoms in Primary Care – A Review of the Literature from ‘Mental Health in Family Medicine’ (2010) advises:

‘A quick and easy method for carrying out a mental state examination in primary care is the Look, Listen and Test schema. This schema utilises the observation and communication skills already possessed by GPs to enable the GP to develop a formulation by observing the patient’s behaviour and activities from the moment they enter the consultation room, by listening to and evaluating the content of the speech to identify underlying themes of depression, anxiety or paranoia, and by encouraging GPs to test severity by using questionnaires developed to evaluate mood and anxiety disorders. Once depression has been diagnosed, the GP should prescribe the standard dose of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) or tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) available in their geographical area of practice.’

The reason for this assessment of mental health, of course, is that many people with MUS are said to suffer with depression or anxiety. If the doctor can identify these problems, therefore, you’re well on your way to a MUS diagnosis. So while you’re talking about the abdominal pain you’re getting, your doctor is apparently sitting there trying to decide if you’re paranoid.

I can’t help wondering if it is really in the patient’s best interests to have the doctor’s attention deflected in this way? If a patient is suffering say, in this case, abdominal pain, is it not sensible to focus on the abdomen, at least to start with? Is there not a danger that in their zeal to identify the 45% of their patients who have MUS, doctors may overlook some genuine physical illness?

I have other concerns about diagnosis- and about MUS in general – but I’ll save them till next time, I think. There’s plenty to go at I’m afraid. But for now I’d like to close this post by touching on an aspect of MUS which particularly concerns me.

The Guidelines for Commissioners identifies not only chronic fatigue syndrome but also myalgic encephalomyelitis as MUS conditions and patient advocates have quite rightly raised concerns about this, pointing out that ME has been recognised by the World Health Organisation as a neurological condition for a great many years. While I agree that this is important, I wonder if it is also overlooking the most important threat from MUS?

In the future, will it matter whether ME is designated MUS or not? Will it matter whether NICE recommend CBT and GET for ME or not? As more is discovered about ME and the imposition of psychological therapies is made more difficult by the growing weight of evidence against them, will the diagnosis ME – and even CFS – become too troublesome for the powers that be to use any more? Far better, perhaps, from their point of view, to shift new patients off into the vague morass of the ‘MUS’ label, where CBT, GET, and other psychological therapies can be used without fear of interference from those who insist on researching the truth of our condition.

How Many Times Must a Story Be Told…?

Sorry I’ve not been blogging recently. I put the blog to one side to concentrate on another project but I didn’t realise how long it would take. Needing to take breaks every five minutes to replenish my brain when I’m writing doesn’t make for speedy progress. Today, however, it has been May 12, ME Awareness Day, and I managed to share a link to Robert Saunders’ excellent ME-related version of Dylan’s ‘Blowing in the Wind’ on my (mainly non-ME specific) Facebook page. I read what I’d written to introduce the piece again just now and decided it was worth sharing it here too. If you’re involved in the ME world in some way, you’ve probably come across Robert’s splendid video already, but if not then do please take five minutes to listen – and maybe to share it with others.

Here (for a change) is the non-Facebook version of Robert’s introduction to the video.

Even if you think you know something about ME, some of the quotes used in the video may surprise you:

‘I split my clinical time between ME/CFS and HIV and I can tell you if I had to choose between the two illnesses, I’d rather have HIV.’ – Dr Nancy Klimas, Director, Institute of Neuro Immune Medicine, NSU.

‘People with ME are more disabled and have a lower quality of life than people with most other chronic illnesses including heart disease and multiple sclerosis.’

‘When the full details of the PACE Trial become known, it will be considered one of the biggest medical scandals if the 21^st century.’ Carole Monaghan, UK MP

The PACE Trial spent £5m of UK taxpayers’ money and purported to illustrate the effectiveness of graded exercise therapy for ME. However, it was eventually discovered to be so full of flaws that it is now being taught in some university courses as an example of how not to do research. In spite of this, PACE is still highly influential worldwide, including here in the UK, its researchers being so embedded in the higher echelons of the medical establishment that mere facts seem to do nothing to damage their ‘credibility’ in the eyes of their peers.

Time and again, the faults and subterfuge which lie behind PACE have been laid bare, first by patients – many working from their sick beds – and more recently by commentators such as Dr David Tuller who have taken the trouble to look at the evidence and understand that the trial, and the biopsychosocial theory which underlies it, need to be exposed as the sham that they are. Time and again, the argument is won, and the PACE researchers are left mumbling the same excuses which didn’t hold water the last time around, yet to change the consensus view of the illness appears to take decades rather than years. Press coverage is slowly improving but the PACE researchers have a powerful lobbying group, the Science Media Centre, on their side, and though journalists are often well meaning, their idea of balance seems to be to present both sides of the argument, irrespective of where the truth may lie. The equivalent of most articles about ME would be a feature on the shape of the planet which gave equal time and weight to the views of the Flat Earth Society.

As the song puts it:

How many times must an idea fail

Before it is seen to be flawed?

How many flaws can a Trial embrace

Before it is seen as a fraud?

So the process of exposing the truth is an arduous one and of course people with ME have little energy to spare. We fight the illness as best we can but it is a cruel truth that we also have to fight an intransigent medical establishment. Thank goodness for those few healthy people who are willing to help us.

The slow process of getting to the truth has to go on. Graded exercise as promoted by PACE is very dangerous for people with ME. It can – and does – leave patients bedbound, sometimes permanently so. Not only that but the persistent presence of the biopsychosocial lobby means that most research money, especially here in the UK, goes into various ‘rehabilitation’ research programs such as PACE rather than into much needed biomedical research.

Of the 14 million people worldwide estimated to have ME, about 25% are housebound or bedbound, many as a result of graded exercise programs. Many of these severely affected can’t tolerate light so they spend their lives in darkened rooms. Some are not even well enough to talk to those close to them, so they Iive lives of total isolation.

The photos in the video illustrate the worlds of a solitary room in which many such people must live. When the song talks of people screaming in the dark then, it is not exaggeration – except that in reality the scream will most likely be a silent one.

Thanks for listening and reading. Please help by sharing this. Thanks, too, to Robert Saunders and all involved in making this powerful video.

How many times must a story be told

Before you will see what is true?

Feedback to Dr Hoenderkamp

First, a brief word of apology: I hadn’t realised what a difficult process it would be to embed a load of tweets into this blog. WordPress protested in various ways at this indignity but I thought I had overcome them. The post looks fine on our desktop PC and my smartphone. So far so good. I hope it’s the same for you. But then I discovered that if I follow a link from a tweet onto a tablet, a whole load of duplicate tweets which I had battled hard to suppress suddenly appear out of nowhere. If this happens to you, please press or click or whatever it is these days on the title of the blog. ie Spoonseekerdotcom That should make it ok. If you then want to leave a comment – or look at the comments – press or click on the title of this particular post, ‘Feedback to Dr H’. You should then have access to the comments without the duplicate tweets returning (I hope!) If you get any other problems with the post, please let me know and I’ll try to help if I’m up to it. Grr. I’m not going to try a post like this again in a hurry – and please don’t ask about the PEM.

"My experience over nearly 30 years, is that the #mecfs label exonerates a GP from needing to understand anything" Quote on FB yesterday from a long term patient whose doctor complained that they didn't understand a consultant's letter. (No access to Google either I presume.)

— Spoonseeker (@spoonseeker) January 26, 2018

Tweeting this quote, which happened to catch my attention on Facebook, recently provoked a flurry of activity on my Twitter feed when the medical writer and broadcaster Dr Renee Hoenderkamp took exception to it as follows:

That's a gross misrepresentation of many excellent GP's who know tons and make it their business to stay up to date on more subjects than most speciality doctors can comprehend. Don't paint us all with the same brush. #notfair #notaccurate
— Renée Hoenderkamp (@DrHoenderkamp) January 26, 2018

It was not my intention – or, I think, that of the person who made the remark on Facebook – to criticise all GPs, and it does not seem to me now, in the cold light of day, that anyone carefully reading my tweet should get that impression. I argued as follows:

I don’t think the tweet disparages GPs in the way you suggest. Point being made is they are not expected – or indeed trained – to know anything *about #mecfs * nor do the vast majority feel the need to find out. I’m sure they’re too busy elsewhere but it’s tough on ME patients https://t.co/uhnSg3fE99

— Spoonseeker (@spoonseeker) 26 January 2018

Dr Hoenderkamp retorted:

How do you know that? You weren't at Med school with me. We were trained actually. And it doesn't prevent us from expanding that knowledge via placement/courses etc. That's how all doctors have to expand their knowledge because there is a limit to what can be achieved in 4 years.
— Renée Hoenderkamp (@DrHoenderkamp) January 26, 2018

And so on:

You are just about first doctor or medical student I've been in touch with who says they were trained in ME at Medical school. If you'd like to know more about the latest research I recommend the purple booklet (written for doctors) from @meassociation https://t.co/hDsYMROhqO https://t.co/jkUgKckemP
— Spoonseeker (@spoonseeker) January 27, 2018

I myself have talked to hundreds of ME patients over the years - through the net and via patient support groups with which I have been involved - and vanishingly few patients have had GPs who were informed - or considered themselves to be informed - about ME.
— Spoonseeker (@spoonseeker) January 26, 2018

Patient Advocate Dr Claudia Gillberg also contested Dr Hoenderkamp’s interpretation of the original tweet:

That's not a misrepresentation at all but a (painful) personal experience and as such can't be inaccurate nor can personal experience ever be 'fair' - an ontological impossibility. Imo, a patient's experience should be food for thought, not cause offence or be dismissed.
— Claudia Gillberg (@DrCSGillberg) January 26, 2018

But it is I'm afraid because it a stereotype which is based on n=1/anecdote and just because you have had a bad experience, it doesn't mean that every GP is poor. Fact. I'm sorry that you have had a bad experience but that doesn't justify a wildly inaccurate extrapolation.
— Renée Hoenderkamp (@DrHoenderkamp) January 26, 2018

The patient refers to her 'experience over 30 years' so it is reasonable to suppose she is talking about more than one personal experience. And of course ME patients talk to each other so her experience will also derive from that of other patients. https://t.co/iOPNp6VQS7
— Spoonseeker (@spoonseeker) January 26, 2018

I myself have talked to hundreds of ME patients over the years - through the net and via patient support groups with which I have been involved - and vanishingly few patients have had GPs who were informed - or considered themselves to be informed - about ME.
— Spoonseeker (@spoonseeker) January 26, 2018

Here’s a report on GP experience for people with MEhttps://t.co/11OJN2Wvxl
— Adam (@ABrokenBattery) January 26, 2018

It’s not the GPs fault, in the UK ME is not taught at medical school, NICE guidelines are wrong, at best exercise and cbt are innefective and at worst harmful (exercise made me housebound). What can patients do in this situation? We just want help.
— Adam (@ABrokenBattery) January 27, 2018

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/957139793506390016

Here's another anecdote then. Over the years I've seen 8 GPs for ME who have given me poor or wrong advice, and another two who admitted they didn't know (which was much more helpful).
— justME (@FeelingSeidy) January 27, 2018

https://twitter.com/jetpack/status/957181562587623424

I have been ill for more than 20 years and of the 5 GP's I have seen,none had a clue,even the one that was sympathetic couldn't help.The expertise,testing and treatment isn't available in the NHS.@spoonseeker is accurate I am afraid.
— Jackie Scoones💙🌹🌈♥️🌹 (@jackiescoones) January 27, 2018

You are absolutely right unfortunately if you have #MEcfs many doctors become very hostile and aggressive just because of the name of this disease; they have no clue how debilitating ME is
— Mark Vink, MD (@Huisarts_Vink) January 27, 2018

My lived experience of 38 years with ME & 4 different GPs is exactly the same. Even the kind ones were clueless. Current GP told me he knew nothing, thought NICE gdlns were useless & told me I had to be an expert ME patient as the NHS was inadequate. https://t.co/tV7fQgTjRP
— diddlytwoshoes (@diddlytwoshoes) January 27, 2018

It's not n=1 anecdote. It's the typical and continuing experience of ME patients who continue to be betrayed by the medical profession generally. Though we accept some individuals are exceptions.
— John Peters (@johnthejack) January 27, 2018

This is why ME Groups keep lists of “ME Friendly” doctors, based on information received from members. In my 11 yr involvement with a regional group, this is one of the most frequent requests encountered. GPs and hospital doctors who understand ME are definitely in the minority.
— Carol L. Binks (@carolbinks) January 27, 2018

A tiny minority, I might add.
— Carol L. Binks (@carolbinks) January 27, 2018

If you are reading this, Dr Hoenderkamp (and I shall be inviting you to take a look) I hope you will agree that a pattern is emerging here: that by and large, to judge by these tweets, people with ME/CFS do not consider their GPs (or other GPs they have consulted) to be well informed about the condition. The tweets that came flowing in that afternoon told between them a very consistent story. There are many more of them below. These were just the tweets which came in from the ME patients who happened to be on Twitter that afternoon. Had I put out further tweets to ask for more, I think we could soon have got into triple figures and beyond. Even the tiny minority of patients who eventually managed to find an informed doctor recount how many others they tried before they ‘struck lucky’.

Of course, this only amounts to anecdotal evidence, but the results seem to me to be too consistent to ignore. What is more, I believe a poll among GPs would give a similar result. Here, tweeted by Joan McParland, are some comments from a questionnaire circulated among medical students after viewing the recent film ‘Unrest’ about ME. It is clear that they were surprised by how little they found they knew about the condition and baffled why this should be the case when so many people are so fundamentally affected.

It is good that Dr Hoenderkamp, unlike these students, feels she has been trained in ME but many patients tweeted to register their concern about what she might have been taught. Here are some of their comments on this issue:

Would b interesting 2 know what you were taught about "CFS" at med school. I recommend this newly posted Q&A with renowned M.E. expert Dr Jose Montoya 4 insight into latest knowledge.
He says ME/cfs = Immune response gone wrong following viral infection.https://t.co/DqHsPAXNxT
— BREXIT is unravelling. (@thegodofpleasur) January 27, 2018

May I ask by which .@WHO criteria/definition would you diagnose ME? What treatment you recommend, advice on prognosis & GPs understanding of blood donation policies for #PWME? And your opinion of the new label MUS? Thank you in advance.
— Heath (@MEawareness) January 27, 2018

But were you trained in the, widely discredited, Biopsychosocial Model of ME, which attributes ongoing symptoms to “false illness beliefs”? I have spoken to several GPs who insisted that they understood ME very well, only to discover that they didn’t at all.
— Carol L. Binks (@carolbinks) January 27, 2018

It's the norm in every country on earth. The medical profession mistakenly thinks it knows about CFS, but is actually as wrong as it was about multiple sclerosis being hysterical paralysis caused by emotional troubles.
— ME/CFS News (@MECFSNews) January 27, 2018

I wonder about the quality of information given on courses and in training. I personally,over the years have received some dreadful, harmful advice from both gp’s and cfs clinic. Only my current gp is good and I had to search him out
— leethepea (@leestocker) January 27, 2018

Thanks you for being the minority who try to keep up. I presume you are aware of the flaws in evidence for the use of CBT and GET which has led to the withdrawal of their recommendation in the US? I also wonder if you have seen the film #Unrest which gives insight into severe ME?
— Spoonseeker (@spoonseeker) January 27, 2018

Why don't you collaborate with https://t.co/pGXp72mWKP to produce one of your Youtube tutorials on the subject?
It would be very helpful to convey up-to-date information - just don't promote Graded Exercise Therapy as an effective treatment. #mecfs #pwme
— BREXIT is unravelling. (@thegodofpleasur) January 27, 2018

A good way to find out more about the reasons why the PACE Trial (which claimed to provide evidence for the use of CBT and GET for ME/CFS) is now widely judged to have been discredited is to read Trial by Error, a detailed expose of the trial by pubic health lecturer and journalist Dr David Tuller. The first installment (of many) can be found here, though simply reading the summary will go a great way towards explaining why it has led to over a hundred eminent scientists and researchers writing an open letter to The Lancet calling for an independant review of the study and why CBT and GET are no longer the recommended treatments for ME/CFS in the USA.

The Journal of Heath Psychology special issue on the PACE Trial is also well worth a read and is available as a free download.

Moving on from PACE, the film Unrest, which has already been mentioned, is a powerful window into the world of severe ME, a chance to connect with some of those 25% of patients most severely affected, most of whom are long term bedbound, spending their lives confined to a single room and usually with little or no medical help. I have been drawing attention to the fact that doctors don’t understand ME but their understanding of severe ME is unfortunately so much worse. This must be the only condition where the sicker you get, the less attention you get from doctors. Most of them have absolutely no idea how severe the illness can become and no idea what to do about it if they see it. Again, I am not getting at doctors here. The problem is most of them aren’t taught about it so what can they do?

Unrest mainly skirts clear of PACE and other such controversy but it does not shirk away from sharing the raw experience of the illness. It has won numerous awards and can be viewed on Netflix.

Also recommended above are the purple booklet from the ME Association, which is a guide to the latest ME/CFS research written for doctors, and researcher Prof Jose Montoya’s question and answer session on ME, which appears in Paul Watton’s tweet above. There are many more such sources of information which could be mentioned but these few which I and others have suggested are a useful introduction to understanding the true nature of the condition, an essential antidote to the misinformation about ME/CFS which is all too abundant.

There is lots of opportunity for informed doctors to spread the word about the reality of ME/CFS. In his tweet above, Paul suggested you should do a video blog about it. A great time to do this would be in May/June when most of the eminent biophysical ME researchers come to Britain for the annual Invest in ME conference. I am sure they will be eager to talk about their latest research and ME in general.

Before returning to the many tweets of 27th January, here’s a particularly powerful – and upsetting – one from ‘motherofaliens’ which came in only the other day. Dr Keith Geraghty’s tweet, which led to it, is also very relevant of course:

It's soul destroying to watch my child's hope fade more and more, each time she sees her GP or Paediatrician, both of whom are completely unsupportive.

— motherofaliens (@agirlandme) February 3, 2018

Sadly – and shamefully – children are amongst those with ME who suffer most from the attitude of doctors. At least one prominent paediatrician does not recognise the existence of severe ME in children. Instead, the parents are blamed for the child’s condition and all too often are threatened with court proceedings. Only the efforts of Jane Colby of Tymes Trust and the paediatrician Dr Nigel Speight prevent such children being taken into care. Tymes Trust have dealt with over 150 such cases already and the problem seems to be escalating.

If you have read this far, Dr Hoenderkamp, thank you for doing so, and perhaps you are starting to understand the reasons for our concern. I shall end with some more tweets received in response to yours of 27th January. I hope I have included enough to give you an idea of the numbers who have had a similar experience. There were more tweets I could have included but embedding them in my blog is proving to be an arduous business, and I too have ME..

Personal experience, GP refused referral, ignored new symptoms, insisted it was ME, even though admitted had little knowledge of condition, private consultation only means available to obtain correct diagnosis and appropriate treatment.
— postersandme (@postersandme) January 27, 2018

This is not one anecdote. This is the shared experience of most M.E. patients. I have seen maybe 2 or 3 male patients say they had not experienced stigma of their person and their M.E. at the doctor. All others say it’s widespread.
— Janelle (@janwly) January 28, 2018

IN my 24 years of severe M.E. I have never once met a Doctor who knows anything or is interested to find out more. I've had horrendous treatment, and incredibly cruel things said to me by dimissive, arrogant, ignorant egomaniacal Doctors. If there are good ones out there, show me
— Sarah Jane ♀️ #RespectMySex (@MissFlowerPixie) January 28, 2018

Ditto. My GP, a lovely man, said I know more than he does and has zero to offer. With extreme reluctance I went to a private doc– the range of issues I have which can be treated is staggering.

— Merrydholl🌟 (@maryqmcgowan) January 28, 2018

GPs views of ME/CFS are consistently negative - many suveys show GPs refuse home vists, view this group as heart-sink patients, or overly emotive and combative. Thats research, my own dialogue with GPs reveals even worse views among some, downright distain https://t.co/jzOtYlSral
— Dr Keith Geraghty (@keithgeraghty) January 28, 2018

I’m really lucky with my current GP but it took 10 doctors before I found her. The GP who diagnosed me, when I asked for more information about this life altering diagnosis, told me to go home and ‘Google it’. That’s the extent of the doctoring I received from her.
— Phoebe (@PhoebsBo) January 27, 2018

Two good GP’s out of fifteen bad, one indifferent... I’ve moved a lot. Am I allowed to share that experience along with the quote about coming back to see one when my head was spinning and I was spitting blood? Have a look yourself - #thingsdoctorssaytopeoplewithME
— Alisontomyradio (@arisonsned) January 28, 2018

The problem is, Dr H, even good GPs who try to educate themselves about ME will learn a load of bunkum if they follow official guidelines. It's nothing to do with non-holistic approach, more to do with medical establishment reframing a complex neuroimmune illness as behavioural.
— Nasim Marie Jafry (@velogubbed) January 28, 2018

And finally, here is Dr Carolyn Wilshire, responding to Dr Hoenderkamp’s original tweet:

There it is again. 'Not me!' Just had the same convo with psychologists, all eager to absolve themselves from the harm caused to PwMEs. We don't help by excusing ourselves - we help by acknowledging our own professions are part of the problem. https://t.co/e7t2Za4L2M
— Carolyn Wilshire (@wilshica) January 28, 2018

The NICE Guidelines – Starting Again?

N.B. Please sign the NICE Guidelines Committee petition – see below.

There was some encouraging feedback from the recent NICE ME/CFS Guidelines Stakeholder meeting, an early milestone in the long process of revising the guidelines. But was such encouragement justified? I wasn’t there myself, so I am grateful to those who attended on our behalf. Blogger and patient advocate Sally Burch reported that Guidelines Director Prof Mark Baker declared: “We’re going to tear it up and start again. We won’t allow it to look the same” while Prof Jonathan Edwards reported as follows (writing in the Science for ME forum):

“What intrigued me most was the elephant in the room – the reason why we were there at all, which was not mentioned once by the speakers from the floor and I suspect hardly at all even in the groups – the need to remove recommendations for CBT and GET. It nevertheless became clear that the NICE staff were absolutely clear that this was why we were there and that they had taken on board that this was not an issue for a few minority activists but essentially for all patients. At our table the facilitator said ‘I presume everyone here is agreed on that’ – despite the fact that a paediatrician and an occupational therapist were present who I suspect may not have realised this was why we were there and for whom these remained standard practice”.

All this talk of ‘tearing it up’ and scrapping CBT and GET was less in evidence however, in the letters which Prof Baker exchanged with Kathleen MCCall (who was representing the Trustees of Invest in ME). Writing in advance of the Stakeholder meeting, Prof Baker wrote: “I appreciate that the existing recommendations are a matter of concern to some patients and groups and we will give some consideration to whether we need to modify or omit any of the existing recommendations during the development of the new guideline”.

This does not exactly sound like ‘tearing up and starting again’ so when the feedback from the meeting emerged, Invest in ME wrote again to question the discrepancies. This time, Prof Baker’s response was of particular interest. He wrote:

“I did indeed say that we will fully replace the guideline and start again…. However, it does not mean that we reject everything that is in the current guideline.”

So this sounds like parts of the guidelines are to be torn up then reinstated, which is easy enough with a roll of sticky tape but a bit confusing for those trying to gauge the mood music at NICE. Prof Baker goes on to explain:

“The problem is, I believe, in the unthinking and ill-informed manner in which the recommendations are imposed on people for whom they are not intended and/or not suitable… I was struck by some of the stories at the workshop about the misuse of the current recommendations and the disturbing extent to which they are imposed on people who are unlikely to benefit from them and for whom alternative approaches would be sensible… The current wording makes clear that patient agreement is required but I imagine that consent is not usually sought and that patients are not considered to have rights to refuse (which they invariably do have in fact).”

So it seems that Prof Baker is at least convinced of the need to safeguard severely ill patients, who do indeed all too often have GET imposed upon them – in clear violation of the existing guidelines. This crucial change is to be encouraged, of course, as is the need for all patients to be informed they have the right to refuse treatment. How exactly this is to be achieved is another matter however. As “the current wording makes clear that patient agreement is required”, what do you do to ensure such agreement is sought? Perhaps the addition of the words “we really mean it this time” in bold print would do the trick. The wholesale removal of GET from the guidelines would be more effective, I suspect, but to judge by Prof Baker’s letter to Invest in ME, that doesn’t appear to be on offer.

He says: “scrapping the entire guideline now would be massively counter-productive as it would almost certainly result in the withdrawal of the already dwindling number of services available to people with ME. Therefore, a rather more limited approach would be required to protect what is good whilst modifying what may be harmful”.

So in spite of saying he wants to tear the whole thing up and start again, Prof Baker clearly believes that bits of it are good and need to be protected. I can’t avoid the growing suspicion that these bits might include CBT and GET. Indeed, if not CBT and GET then what? A large part of our problem is that when it comes down to what purports to be ‘evidence-based’, there isn’t anything else. Of course the ‘evidence’ for CBT and GET is extremely unconvincing, as David Tuller and others have illustrated time and again, and the reason there isn’t the evidence for anything else is that CBT and GET – and the misapprehension about the condition which their adoption has brought into being – have effectively put paid to biophysical research for many decades. This sad circumstance may give us the moral high ground – from the perspective of those who understand – but it doesn’t actually help.

As Jonathan Edwards puts it: “All in all it seems to me that something important has been achieved but there is still more work to do. NICE are very clear that the great majority of patients believe that CBT and GET are worse than useless. They realise that a committee must not be made up entirely of psychiatrists. However, when the committee comes to look at the evidence the only evidence for treatments working they will find will be on CBT and GET. It is going to be hard for them to not at least mention that there is supposed to be some evidence. Hopefully that will not be followed by a recommendation. However, I sense an attitude even amongst physicians and paediatricians that if CBT and GET are not available they will have nothing to offer. A lot of doctors find that uncomfortable. They should not but they do. So there will be a tendency for CBT and GET to remain in the guidelines even if watered down. That will depend to a degree on who is on the committee. That needs some thought. Applications are being taken in June and July.”

So yes indeed, the personnel on the committee will be of vital importance. Graham McPhee, John Peters, Sally Burch and numerous other patient advocates have written a letter to NICE requesting that the committee members are chosen with openness and integrity. They have also produced a petition which anyone can sign. Over 2,700 have done so already. If you haven’t signed yet, please consider joining them.

This is important. As Jonathan Edwards says, doctors feel uncomfortable if they have nothing to offer. This unfortunate fact is the reason why so many patients with physical illnesses over the years have been treated as though they have a mental health issue. It probably won’t help the patient but it’s better for the doctor than feeling powerless.

Sad to say, CBT and GET may remain in the guidelines for this reason, if for no other. They haven’t been torn up yet. We can’t even be sure that Prof Baker’s proposed amendments to avoid the inappropriate imposition of these ‘treatments’ will be acted upon, as he is due to retire before the new guidelines are finalised.

It is good that many patient advocates attending the meeting left with a good feeling about it but, as I am sure they realise, the battle is far from over yet. As a starter, we need the right people on the guidelines committee. Don’t forget to sign that petition…

Update: Apologies for my previous PS about the Royal College of Physicians (which I’ve now removed). It turns out I was quoting the wrong Royal College from the table. I hate to spread misinformation so many thanks to Annie who left a comment to set me straight. Nevertheless, as she points out, there is no reason for undue confidence in the RCP who are to take a leading role in the guidelines revision. Annie writes as follows:

“Excellent summary of where things stand so far with the review of the NICE guidelines.

“One point though the worrying comment you cite from the stakeholders comments during last summer’s consultation exercise was made by the Royal College of GP’s, not the Royal College of Physicians if I am reading the table correctly on page 89? Nonetheless, the Royal College of Physicians said they endorsed the comments of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the neurologists whose submissions were poor and inaccurate and did not want the guidelines updated, so I am still not filled with confidence having the Royal College of Physicians so heavily involved.”

Have You Been Harmed by PACE?

Dr Sarah Myhill has written a comprehensive letter of complaint to the General Medical Council about the conduct of the authors of the PACE Trial. You can find the full text here. This is a courageous letter which states very publicly and unequivocally what a great many patients have been saying for some time: that in the way they have conducted the Trial, the PACE authors are guilty of fraud.

Dr Myhill is asking for patients who have been harmed by the Trial to support her by sharing their experience with the GMC using a template letter which can find it in a Word document here. Please try to find the time and energy to do this if your health allows. Dr Myhill is taking on a lot in trying to help patients in this way. I believe she deserves the support of us all in return.

Craig Robinson, from Dr Myhill’s team, explains in more detail as follows:

*** DR MYHILL HAS COMPLAINED TO THE GMC ABOUT THE PACE AUTHORS ***

*** SHE WANTS YOUR HELP ***

**PLEASE DO COPY YOUR LETTER OF SUPPORT TO cr648@hotmail.co.uk – if you feel comfortable with doing so**

PLEASE SHARE THIS POST AS WIDELY AS POSSIBLE. THIS COMPLAINT IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.

The GMC is the UK doctor’s regulatory authority – the General Medical Council. Patient support is sought from all patients who feel they have been harmed by PACE. You do not have to be a UK citizen.

PACE is the study ‘Comparison of adaptive pacing therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy, graded exercise therapy, and specialist medical care for chronic fatigue syndrome (PACE): a randomised trial. (2011)’, published in The Lancet.

SEVEN other medical doctors are supporting this complaint but wish to remain anonymous – they are concerned about the impact of such “whistle-blowing” on their future careers within and without the NHS.

The complaint is one of Fraud, namely:
–fraud by false representation
–fraud by failing to disclose information
–fraud by abuse of position

There are also numerous breaches of:
–GMC Guidance on Good Medical Practice
–GMC Guidance on Good Practice in Research
–GMC Guidance on Consent to Research

Dr Myhill is asking for your help.

Please read the letter of complaint and also the ‘PACE patient support letter‘.

HELPING DR MYHILL

We want people who have been harmed by PACE to write in support of this complaint. You are free to use the PACE patient support template letter. You could have been harmed in any of these ways and possibly others too (please see further notes about this further down the post) :

• suffered damage (including physical, mental or emotional distress) as a result of CBT.
• suffered damage (including physical mental or emotional distress) as a result of GET.
• been denied disability benefits because the physical nature of your disease has not been properly recognised and/or you have been told you have a psychological condition.
• have been denied industrial compensation for your disease because the physical nature of your disease has not been properly recognised and/or you have been told you have a psychological condition.
• have been denied referral or funding for referral to a physician specialising in the biomedical approach to treating CFS/ME.

You do NOT have to have been diagnosed or have fallen ill with CFS/ME after PACE was published [March 2011] to support this complaint.

So, for example if you were diagnosed/fell ill in 1980, but have recently been refused benefits as a result of PACE [for example, for not engaging in CBT or because your illness was considered psychological) or maybe you have suffered mental distress as a result of PACE (for example, benefit applications were more stressful because your illness was considered psychological) then you CAN support this complaint. It will help our case to have as many support letters as possible.

If you feel you have even the smallest ‘case’ for inclusion then please do submit a letter of support – it is incumbent on the GMC to prove that you have not been so affected, not for you to prove that you have!

Please do email if you are in doubt or need help phrasing why you have been harmed by PACE. Please be patient – we will respond as quickly as possible. See the hotmail email address below.

Just put your reasons for supporting this complaint in the relevant section in the PACE patient support letter and fill in any other portions that need filling in [all marked in red] and then:

1–email it to TStephenson@gmc-uk.org – Sir Terence Stephenson is the Chair of the GMC

2–if you can, please send your letter by post too, here is the address –
Sir Terence Stephenson
General Medical Council
Fitness to Practise Directorate
3 Hardman Street
Manchester, M3 3AW.

3—if you feel comfortable with doing so, please can you copy your letter of support to Dr Myhill at cr648@hotmail.co.uk [in the past the GMC have denied receiving letters of support and having physical copies to collate and send to them has been a very powerful tool]

GENERAL COMMENTS

We cannot engage in a running commentary on progress but will give updates as and when possible and necessary.

We know that GMC employees or people who report to the GMC are members of the Dr Myhill groups and so we do have to be circumspect.

You may feel that the letter of complaint could be improved – good!

In 15 years of dealing with the GMC, and other regulatory bodies, one thing above all has become clear: these regulatory investigations are like a game of chess. A marathon not a sprint. You have to plan 6 moves in advance…

Essentially, we are saying – trust us! Between us we have won 30 GMC cases as defendants and numerous cases across many regulatory bodies as complainants.

Thank you.

Here’s Craig again with an update:

N.B. The harm done to you does NOT have to fall within the 5 broad categories listed in the template letter. ANY harm or ANY DISTRESS caused by PACE is ”enough”. See as follows for an example of how another patient has put it in her great letter:

I have suffered mental distress as a result of PACE. For example, benefit applications, and assessments were more stressful because my illness was considered psychological
Visits to doctors, and consultants, and NHS emergency departments are more stressful because my illness is considered psychological.
I am denied treatment because my illness is considered psychological
I am accused of wasting time, and lying, and treated with contempt and suspicion because my illness is considered psychological
My word and experience is dismissed because my illness is considered psychological, and I am labelled as ‘mentally ill’.
I am labelled as a delusional patient because of negative connotations implied by doctors and NHS staff.
It appears all my other health issues, and concerns are now considered psychological, and therefore dismissed as imaginary
I experienced extreme trauma, HARM & LOSS because my illness was considered psychological
I was targeted, and harmed after complaining, because my illness was considered psychological
I am denied compensation for my disease because the physical nature of it has not been properly recognised and/or told I have a psychological condition
It is my belief PACE WAS AT THE ROOT OF THESE PROBLEMS

A (Second) Letter to Dr Phil Hammond

Dear Dr Hammond – I was very pleased to hear about your vision for the way ahead regarding CFS on your 25 October BBC Radio Bristol show with Jennifer Brea (available on listen again at 2-21)

You said: “I remember when HIV first hit in the 80s in the UK … it was the patients themselves who learnt all the research and became very assertive and demanded the best care… I see that same movement happening with chronic fatigue. We need to unite people across the globe and use their wisdom and experience to get better research and that’s the route to an optimistic future, I think.”
I very much agree that this is the way ahead. We patients are doing our best to move things along this path. Unfortunately “becoming assertive” in the way that has been so successful for HIV campaigners is being interpreted by some health professionals as ‘harassment’. I’m glad you do not share this view. We are not trying to be difficult for the sake of it. All we are trying to do is to help uncover the truth about this illness which devastates so many patients’ lives.
With this in mind, I wonder if you have the time to answer a few questions which arose from your interview with Jennifer Brea. You were kind enough to respond when I wrote to you about a year ago and any response you can make again now would be very much appreciated.
1) You mentioned to Jennifer that some of your young patients improve when they have graded exercise therapy at your clinic. When you responded to me last year, however, you said that ‘the mainstay of treatment ( at the clinic) is activity management’. Which of these do you actually use at the clinic? Or is it both?
2) You were also telling Jennifer that when you do graded exercise therapy, you cut back on the amount your patients are doing. I wonder if your approach is the same as that described in the Magenta protocol, where patients start on a baseline level which is the same as the median amount which is currently being achieved each week. The total level therefore remains the same but there is more consistency in the amount of exercise day to day. Once this baseline level has been achieved every day for 1 to 2 weeks, then according to Magenta, participants are advised to increase exercise by 10 to 20% a week. This means that any cutback in exercise is not substantial (really more a smoothing out than an actual reduction) and does not seem to last very long. Is this indeed what you do in the clinic? In which case, the overall emphasis seems really to be more about increasing the level of exercise rather than cutting back. Or do you do things another way? If so, why do you not use the same regime as Magenta?
3) Jennifer remarked that the regime in your clinic as you described it to her seemed very like pacing, but the Magenta advice to increase by 10 to 20% a week seems much less flexible than that. Even if the increase is not rigidly imposed, the therapist – and inevitably the patient – will feel under pressure to deliver it. The most crucial issue is: what happens if symptoms start getting worse? Are patients encouraged to cut back on exercise or to carry on regardless? The Magenta protocol doesn’t seem to say what the advice will be but the PACE protocol is clearly in favour of carrying on as far as possible in spite of worsening symptoms. Is this the advice given in your clinic I wonder? If so, then it certainly isn’t like pacing. And if otherwise, what is the advice given?
I’m sorry if these questions seem fussy and pedantic but it seems to me that a lot of the problem in understanding CFS is that so many factors are not precisely defined. From a short conversation, it can seem like a graded exercise program is very similar to pacing but the devil is in the detail. Similarly, so many researchers have made the mistake of assuming that patients diagnosed with different diagnostic criteria all have the same condition.
As you said in the interview: “we’ve noticed there are some kids who do improve when they have graded exercise therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy – and some who don’t, which suggests… either we’re dealing with different conditions or chronic fatigue syndrome is a variety of different things.” As Jennifer put it (with your agreement): “we have to make sure we are treating the right patients with the right treatments.” This is true not least because the wrong treatment can lead to long term disability.
So I couldn’t agree more that we need to distinguish between the different types of patients, but we’re not going to do this as long as we keep on using a dogs breakfast of different criteria to identify patients, frequently conflating ME/CFS with generic chronic fatigue and even making up new variations as we go along. I’m afraid that a prime example of the latter appeared in the original protocol for FITNET-NHS, which – for no very good reason – proposed using a version of the NICE criteria which did not require the presence of post-exertional malaise. I understand that this has now been scrapped but why on earth was it thought to be a good idea in the first place? Unless we start describing patients precisely and consistently, we will never get anywhere.
You mentioned that some of your patients do not respond well to graded exercise and it would be interesting to see if such patients fit the Canadian criteria rather than Fukuda or NICE. You also showed great interest when Jennifer described the use of the VO2 Max test to try to make sense of patient response to exercise. You even suggested collaboration. Would it not be possible to make that happen? It is indeed important to distinguish between the different types of patients so why are you not using some of these (what seem to me to be) obvious strategies to help you do so?
I think it is great that you are helping so many children who respond well to your therapies but you acknowledge that many do not and I can only agree that there is a very great need to distinguish between them, not least for the sake of those who you describe as having severe symptoms for a long time. As you say ‘that is where most of the attention needs to go’. Once again, I can only agree. I applaud what is obviously your heartfelt desire to help such children. As a concerned and assertive patient, I urge you to do whatever you can to bring that about.

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