Wessely & the Real Victims of ME

[Guest guest]

What most critici forget to tell, including

Shepherd in his half-hearted

defense, is that Simon Wessely do not

believe in his ridiculous theory himself, but

that he has major interests in the insurance

industry.

To appoint a severe neurological disease

(WHO 93.3) as *psychiatric*, is the most

effective way to avoid expensive laboratory

research and to curtailing sickness benefit

payments.

~jvr

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http://bit.ly/po4rhb

The real victims of ME

are those with the disease

29 July 2011

No one should have to endure threats of

violence and malicious abuse for their

professional commitment to the advance of

medical knowledge, but while listening to the

Today Programme interviews about ME/chronic

fatigue syndrome and the hate campaign

directed at those leading research into

psychological based explanations for the

illness, I had the urge to bang heads

together.

My annoyance began with *the scientist*

interviewed in the role of victim.

I was left to question whether his science

might be as distorted as his reasoning

expressed on Radio 4.

This story is not a new one.

Psychiatrist Simon Wessely, well-known for his

theories that myalgic encephalomyelitis is a

type of neurosis, was telling the New Scientist

in 2009 about the threats he faced.

Now he tells the BBC's Tom Fielden:

*People seem to prefer to be diagnosed

with like a retro-virus, a potentially

incurable, maybe even fatal illness,

rather than an illness for which we do

have some reasonable but not perfect

treatment.

" That really attests to the strength of

feeling here – I would rather have an

incurable virus than a potentially curable

disorder if the cure was treatment

involving any acknowledgement of the

social or psychological.*

No, Dr Wessely, I suspect that that is not

what ME sufferers feel – not even those who

have descended to desperate extremist

levels.

It is the quality of the science and such

distorted reasoning that enrages ME

sufferers.

They feel helpless and dismayed – and if you

were genuinely listening to your patients, Dr

Wessely, you would understand something of

that.

They feel dismayed by the fact that most

government funding into ME concentrates on

research into the psychology and not the

virology of the illness.

They feel dismayed by NICE guidelines and

doctors who persist with programmes of

treatment that not only do not work but make

them feel worse.

They feel dismayed by a stigma that still

surrounds the illness, stemming from early

medical ignorance.

Dr Wessely accuses his hostile critics

of *trying to make me into a leper*.

Well, that is just how many ME sufferers have

been made to feel for years.

They feel dismayed that research into viruses

that consistently precede the onset of ME is

ignored.

Was it only last autumn that scientists at

Dundee University had found abnormalities in

the white blood cells of all children with

ME/CFS in their study?

Dundee's Professor Jill Belch said:

*It's important because some people do

suggest that ME is a disease of the mind and

here we are showing that it is a disease of

the body.*

They obviously didn't tell Dr Wessely.

Anyone whose life has been shattered by ME

or CFS – they can be separated – would take

any cure, anything that could offer them a

return to normality.

I would like to hear from the medics who

suffer from ME.

In my 15-year interest in the illness I have yet

to find one who agrees with the Wessely

theory.

No matter how sceptical they may have been,

they seem to be instant converts to a

physical cause once they become sufferers.

I wish Dr Wessely nothing but good health

and back the call for hostilities against him to

be halted.

But there are far more victims in this story –

the tens of thousands of people in the UK

whose lives have been almost shut down by

ME.

I will write more on my experience as a parent

of an ME sufferer in Public Servant magazine.

Allaby