Professor Tony Pinching and his rejection of biomedical evidence

Eileen Marshall and Margaret Williams:

It has also been confirmed by the CRD that peer-reviewers for the NICE Guidelines will be the same team as last time and will include Professor Simon Wessely, Professor Mike Sharpe, Professor Peter White, Professor Tony Pinching, Professor Allen Hutchinson (who was Chair of the Chief Medical Officer’s Working Group) and Chris Clark, Chief Executive Officer of Action for ME. Chris Clark has aligned himself with the psychiatric lobby.

The implacable views of these people are already well-documented, as is their determined rejection of the biomedical evidence.

If they retain total control over the outcome of the NICE Guidelines, no progress can be made.

The alleged “evidence-base” for the use of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and graded exercise therapy (GET) -- provided by Bagnall et al specifically to support the forthcoming NICE Guidelines -- has been cogently destroyed by Hooper and Reid in their paper “Inadequacy of the York (2005) Systematic Review of the CFS/ME Medical Evidence Base” that was released on 18th January 2006 (available online at http://meactionuk.org.uk/FINAL_on_NICE_for_Gibson.html ).

Hooper and Reid have produced a thorough and impeccably referenced analysis of ... Read more>>