PACE trial results are out: ME is caused by an oncogenic virus

The Dr. Speedy Network of Clinical Excellence has been conducting a PACE (Properly Acquiring Clinical Evidence) trial over the last 80 years or so.

This was a miracle in itself, as we only had a budget of five pounds. This time however, we have been conducting a PACE trial including ME patients (ME stands for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis).

We have deliberately steered away from wasting billions of taxpayers money on a trial that excluded the patients that were supposed to be in the trial and which came to conclusions that were written before the trial had even started.

We used the five pounds to buy the groundbreaking book by Dr. Melvin Ramsay, which describes the outbreak of ME in the Royal Free Hospital in London in 1955. He only included patients who had fallen ill with ME. Hysterical psychiatrist were deliberately excluded before he had even started to write his book.

The answer to what is causing ME can be found in this book. The only thing one has to do, is read the book and use the thinking part of our brain. The part which harbors the Pinocchio gene, prevalent in CBT psychiatrists, is destroyed by first undergoing a few sessions of Lightning Therapy.

There are few things that stand out if you read the book.

First of all, chronic fatigue doesn't feature in this book about ME.

Secondly, a cardinal feature of ME is muscle fatigue, i.e. muscle weakness, with an abnormally delayed recovery, which can take days or weeks, after doing trivial things.

The other thing, which becomes clear straight away is that we've had similar small epidemics, always in closely knit communities. Dr. Ramsay also described the phenomenon that a few weeks after the initial outbreak there was another one, this time a lot smaller, and this continued for about 5 to 6 month after the initial one.

Straight away, one has to think about Mycoplasma pneumonia. People at highest risk for mycoplasma pneumonia include those living or working in crowded areas such as schools, Army barracks and homeless shelters. The incubation time for Mycoplasma pneumonia is one to 4 weeks. This means that it takes one to 4 weeks after catching the bug to become ill. A bit like with chickenpox, which has an incubation time of one to 3 weeks.

As if to illustrate this point, two of the very first outbreaks of ME happened in 1937 and 1939 both in the Swiss Army, affecting 130 and 73 soldiers/officers respectively.

Over the years, we've had almost 5000 research papers showing all sorts of abnormalities in ME patients.

These abnormalities are ignored by CBT psychiatrists, which means that most ordinary doctors don't know anything about these abnormalities. Some of the most striking abnormalities are a constantly activated immune system, abnormal cytokines, abnormalities in the white blood cells as discovered in September last year by Prof Newton, and mitochondrial abnormalities, which one can test for via a blood test.

So, we now know that ME is caused by a virus, with an incubation time of about 1 to 3 weeks. It's also a stealth virus, in the way that routine testing by your doctor won't find anything. A bit like doing routine testing in someone who has HIV. If you don't do the right test, you won't get the right answer.

A few more facts, that not only indicate that ME is a physical condition, but also that it is caused by a virus:

almost 5% of patients in a study of 752 ME/CFS patients developed ME/CFS after a blood transfusion.

ME/CFS subjects have a shortened life-span and are at risk for developing lymphoma

Highly increased incidence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in ME/CFS, or to be more precise, the incidence rate of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is 0.02% in the United States, yet nearly 5% of ME/CFS patients develope the disease.

How can one determine which virus is causing ME? For that we would obviously need more than the five pounds we had for our PACE trial.

And then one must take the following steps:

First of all, as this is about ME, we should select ME patients and not exclude them as the CBT psychiatrists always do.

We would recommend to select a small number of patients with severe ME. Why severe ME? Because a six-year-old, with his eyes closed, can tell the difference between someone who is bedridden with severe ME, who likes to get well, who hasn't lost his interest in things, etc. and someone who is bedridden with depression for years.

These people don't eat or drink, don't respond, don't want to get well, have a mask face, and if you've seen them once you recognise them straight away. Just like severe ME this is a horrible disease, but these patients do need to see a psychiatrist, whereas patients with severe ME do need to steer very clear of one.

The second thing we would need is a team of proper virologists because they will need to do most of the work.

We obviously need a sample so that the virologists can set out to find the virus that causes ME.

Now as we all know, the E stands for brain symptoms, and it's not a good idea to start poking about in nervous tissue. However, patients who suffer from severe ME and are bedridden, suffer from severe muscle fatigue and muscle pain, the M part of ME. These are caused by a virus which has hijacked our mitochondria, the energy centres of our cells.

So the answer is pretty straightforward, we need to do a muscle biopsy from these very painful muscles. Yes I know, not something we would be looking forward to, however, as this is the place where we can find the virus, we will be more than happy to help to find this virus, which is causing this severe and very disabling disease, in our mitochondria.

We should apply to the MRC and other organisations that should provide funds for proper ME research. However, our best chances at the moment lie with the dedicated and highly motivated team at the WPI.

So please donate to the WPI even though the Count ME in event was yesterday, and even if you can hardly spare the money, every pound/dollar etc will bring them closer to finding the virus/culprit and solving this severe and very disabling disease/mystery.

And for every doctor or researcher reading this, whoever solves ME and finds this virus, you will be in line for stardom, happy patients and a Nobel prize.

See also: Harvard Medical School: EEG spectral coherence data distinguish chronic fatigue syndrome patients from healthy controls and depressed patients 
See also: The putative agent of ME/CFS can be transferred to monkeys 
See also: Almost 5% of ME/CFS patients contracted ME/CFS from a blood transfusion
See also: Cerebrospinal fluid profiles can differentiate between Lyme disease, ME/CFS and healthy controls
See also: The main characteristic of ME is an abnormally delayed muscle recovery after doing trivial things, if you don't have that, you don't have ME