Permission to repost.
The 25% ME Group sent this to The Times
The 25% ME Group is the only UK charity representing just severely
affected ME sufferers, we would like to request a right of reply to
the article by Stefanie Marsh in The Times, 6 August 2011.
Stefanie Marsh’s article about Professor Simon Wessely "the most hated
doctor in Britain” begins by naming him Britain’s foremost authority
on ME. This may be his opinion, but it is worth reminding readers that
medics worldwide who treat and study ME disagree with Professor
Wessely that the illness is psychiatric. Substantial and significant
published research shows ME to be organic, not psychiatric and it is
considered to be so by doctors in all fields other than psychiatry.
The renowned expert Dr Byron Hyde said "The belief that [ME] CFS is a
psychological illness is the error of our time."
In 2004 the Countess
of Mar claimed in the House of Lords, "Since his arrival on the scene in
1987, Wessely has repeatedly and persistently played down,
dismissed, trivialised or ignored most of the significant
international biomedical evidence of organic pathology found in ME
because it does not fit his psychiatric model of the disorder. She
went on to call him "savagely cruel to the ME community”. This is a
view of Simon Wessely that it may have been useful to explore in an
article that seems astonished that some ME patients are angry with
him.
In Stefanie's article Wessely states "a pessimistic illness perception
can become a self-fulfilling prophecy of non-recovery". "Patients
tend to view their symptoms as part of an overwhelming, mysterious,
unexplainable disease that struck them out of the blue and from which
they most likely will never recover."
A very quick internet search
would have found The Case Definition for ME compiled by the world's
leading authorities on ME which makes these "beliefs" seem more like
reality. It states that it is "a severe systemic acquired illness"
that "follows an acute infection" and that previously "patients had
been healthy, living full and active lifestyles".
It quotes studies
that show less than 10% of patients return to pre-illness levels of
health and claims that loss of quality of life is more than for "many
other chronic illnesses.
The article presented Wessely as a victim of abuse from ME sufferers.
However the real victims of this story ...
However the real victims of this story could be seen as the thousands
of ME patients whose lives are drastically affected by dangerous and
unproven assumptions that nothing is physically wrong with them.
The
recent deaths of Sophia Mirza and Lynn Gilderdale show where this can
lead.
Patients anger at Wessely’s loud and damaging mis-diagnosis,
like the anger of MS patients when psychiatry labelled it hysterical
paralysis, is not based on prejudice against mental illness but on the
fact that they will not receive treatment or a cure if Wessely's
therapy is all that is offered.
As the Countess of Mar pointed out,
the end result of Wessely’s proclamations is "that patients receive no
investigations, support, treatment, benefits or care.
25% ME Group
Troon
Ayrshire
See also: Harvard Medical School: EEG spectral coherence data distinguish chronic fatigue syndrome patients from healthy controls and depressed patients
See also: More psycho crap from the Times, this time from David Aaronovitch who can't be bothered to read the biomedical evidence that ME is a severely disabling infectious, neurological disease
See also: More psychiatric masturbation in The Times
See also: M C S A NEWS: The only apparent benefit of continued research into psychiatric causes for ME/CFS lies in the pocketbooks of CBT psychiatrists
See also: Cerebrospinal fluid profiles can differentiate between Lyme disease, ME/CFS and healthy controls
See also: Post-exercise acid exposure 50 times higher in ME/CFS patients vs healthy controls, with no reduction with repeat exercise
See also: Dr. Hilary Jones, When you say, "ME is controversial", did you check that with Alison, Annabel and Sophia? Now, I'm sure you didn't, because all three died of ME. Yes you read that right, …
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