Source: The Scotsman: Published Date: 27 October 2009
"Thanks for your excellent, informative article on the possibility that the newly discovered retrovirus xmrv causes myalgic encephalomyelitis (Living, 10 October).
The UK's quarter of a million sufferers finally have some hope of effective treatment.
ME has been classified as a physical, neurological illness by the World Health Organisation since 1969. Despite this, for 25 years all UK taxpayer research and treatment funding has gone to psychiatrists, who insist it is an "abnormal illness belief".
The time is overdue for research funding into ME to be placed in the hands of immunologists. Research into psychological treatments should be cancelled to fund this.
HILARY PATTEN
Beaconsfield Way
Frome, Somerset"
Doctor Speedy and ME in search of medical honesty
'Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: la bete noire of the Belgian Health Care Syste=
ReplyDeletem'
Maes M, Twisk FN.
Neuro Endocrinol Lett. 2009 Aug 26;30(3):300-311.
Maes Clinics, Antwerp, Belgium. crc.mh@telenet.be.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19855351
The World Health Organization acknowledges Myalgic Encephalomyelitis
(ME)/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) to be a medical illness. ME/CFS is
characterized by disorders in the inflammatory and oxidative and
nitrosative stress (IO&NS) pathways. In 2002, the Belgian government
started with the development of CFS "Reference Centers", which
implement a "psychosocial" model.
The medical practices of these CFS
Centers are defined by the Superior Health Council, e.g. treatment
should be based upon Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Graded
Exercise Therapy (GET); and biological assessments and treatments of
ME/CFS should not be employed. Recently, the Belgian government has
evaluated the outcome of the treatments at the CFS Centers. They
concluded that a "rehabilitation therapy" with CBT/GET yielded no
significant efficacy in the treatment of ME/CFS and that CBT/GET
cannot be considered to be curative therapies.
In case reports, we
have shown that patients who were "treated" at those CFS centers with
CBT/GET in fact suffered from IO&NS disorders, including intracellular
inflammation, an increased translocation of gram-negative
enterobacteria (leaky gut), autoimmune reactions and damage by O&NS.
Considering the fact that these findings are exemplary for ME/CFS
patients and that GET may even be harmful, it means that many patients
are maltreated by the Belgian CFS Centers.
http://www.thisiskent.co.uk/tonbridge/NHS-treat-mental-illness/article-1457668-detail/article.html
ReplyDelete'NHS must not treat ME as mental illness'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/oct/28/work-capability-assessment-incapacity-benefits
ReplyDeleteBending the rules
Bending the rules
Critics of new medical tests aimed at getting claimants off benefits and into work say they are target-driven measures that penalise genuinely ill people. By Melissa Viney
* Buzz up!
* Digg it
* Melissa Viney
* The Guardian, Wednesday 28 October 2009
* Article history
Anna Wood, ESA claimant
Anna Wood, who has severe ME and is dependent on help from her home carer, was initially deemed ineligible for the new form of incapacity benefit. Photograph: Frank Baron
Had Anna Wood realised that by bending down to pick up an object off the floor she would be deemed fit to work, perhaps the 33-year-old former academic would have thought twice. Wood, who had been forced to give up a prestigious fellowship position at Strathclyde University last year after developing severe ME, was made to perform the exercise as part of a medical test that all claimants of the new sickness benefit for ill and disabled people have to undertake.
"The doctor came and asked me lots of questions and filled in a form," she recalls. "I then got a letter saying, 'You've only got 12 points. We need 15. You don't qualify.' He had asked me to bend down and pick something off the floor and I did it. The point is I can't do it repeatedly, and I don't see how that can mean I can work. There was nothing in the test that related to my stamina and energy.
"How any normal person could read my medical report and think, 'Oh yes, she can work', is absolutely beyond me.".....