Wessely Taunted & Ridiculed ME/CFS patients for years

[Guest guest]

Letter to The Observer

na Agardy

RE: Chronic fatigue syndrome researchers face death threats

from militants Scientists are subjected to a campaign of

abuse and violence Robin McKie, The Observer, Sunday 21

August 2011

Following this article the Observer should call itself Wessely's

Bugle. It joined the media herd later than others but made up for it

by stepping up the hysteria.

The reporter made no attempt to explore what might be behind the

claims by Prof Wessely et al and proceeded to portray ME/CFS

sufferers as a dangerous species.

She could have asked Wessely if he and colleagues have in fact

done work for insurance companies and considered the conflicts

of interest arising, or, how it is that if he was forced to give up

ME/CFS research years ago, his name appears on two such

reports published in the last year.

Concerning the recent PACE study he was involved in, it is not just

a matter of patients and 'activists' 'not liking' it as he claims.

Some serious concerns are raised by this research and patients'

lives are bound to be significantly affected.

He dismisses all this. He puts freedom of information requests and

criticism of his research on a par with threats.

These are legitimate parts of science and democracy and he

should only be concerned about them if he expects to remain

unaccountable.

His various Bugles have let him get away with all his complaints

about these things with no challenge.

Perhaps the psychiatrists could consider how their own behaviour

might have contributed to this situation.

The article fails to mention that Wessely has been taunting and

ridiculing ME/CFS patients for years, denying their illness.

Psychiatrists should have enough insight into human behaviour to

realise that if you suppress, invalidate and generally drive to

desperation a group of people, unfortunately, some eventually

react in desperate and unreasonable ways.

In the case of ME/CFS such people can only be the ones with a

modicum of energy. As McKie describes, most suffer with too

much pain, exhaustion and a host of other symptoms to even

consider such things.

Then again, we are not even sure who is included in Wessely's

group of maligned 'activists'. It seems he includes anybody who

does not fully agree with his research and pronouncements.

If The Observer is interested in balancing its story of threats with

stories of psychiatric abuse of MECFS patients, the story of

Sophia Mirza might be a good place to start.

She died as result of ME/CFS at age 32, but not before being

subjected to ignorant and brutal treatment at the hands of

psychiatry.

Please note the post-mortecom findings in her story:

http://bit.ly/mUFRxf

This time, just in case his claim seemed too outrageous before,

Wessely insists he is not joking when he says he feels safer in

Iraq and Afghanistan.

Has he checked with the families of those killed at the British

Council in Kabul and the thousands of civilians and soldiers killed

and maimed in these countries?

Will The Observer do an objective, balanced report on ME/CFS in

the future and give patients and critics of the research promoted

by Wessely a voice?

At present this newspaper looks very much captive to his

self-serving perspective.