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Wessely honoured with a knighthood for his work for GWS and ME

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15,786
Do you really want to let Veterans hear that the troubles you feel we are facing as patients with this diagnosis are the same as those that they themselves face?

You really think you are qualified to do so? Personally I think it would be disrespectful to do so but I'd like to hear from some Advocates for Veterans with GWS and the Veterans themselves.

. . .

Back to GWS. I do not think it is prudent to compare ME to GWS in any way, shape or form. But for those who have far more knowledge than me - they may feel able and willing to do so.

According to the document at http://www.lloyd-gwii.com/admin/ManagedFiles/2/GWI1008 00.doc these are Simon Wessely's statements regarding GWS:
The final perspective I think which you need to address is that there are people around with Gulf War Syndrome who never went anywhere near the Gulf and all they have done is they have shown that the symptoms of Gulf War illness are remarkably similar, indeed identical, to the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome, which is where I came in. I see people who have no connection with the military, such as teachers, nurses and doctors who have chronic fatigue syndrome and whose symptoms are exactly the same as Gulf War veterans, so again we cannot look exclusively in the Gulf for the cause of problems and we have to take a broader perspective.
Most of them, nearly all of them, had CBW [Chemical and Biological Weapons] prophylaxis [vaccines?], so that is a possibility. I would suggest that nearly all of them had anxiety about the CW [Chemical Weapons] threat and that for all of them war is stressful. Finally, all of them were exposed to media and social pressures on their return. I would suggest that it is a complicated mixture of these three things. . . .

The "mixture of these three things" is pretty similar to Wessely's proposed onset and perpetuation of CFS: maybe there was a physical factor, but it's totally gone now. People still think they're sick because of psychological (and maybe social) factors.
 
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1,446
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Prof wessely also states in his evidence to the 2004 gulf war illnes inquiry that he asked the MOD for research money but the MODsaid no. he said that he then asked the american military who said yes, and so funded the epidemiological study that he is talking about at the inquiry..
 

Firestormm

Senior Member
Messages
5,055
Location
Cornwall England
According to the document at http://www.lloyd-gwii.com/admin/ManagedFiles/2/GWI1008 00.doc these are Simon Wessely's statements regarding GWS:



The "mixture of these three things" is pretty similar to Wessely's proposed onset and perpetuation of CFS: maybe there was a physical factor, but it's totally gone now. People still think they're sick because of psychological (and maybe social) factors.

I am not going to comment on GWI. However, I have read the linked testimony and it does make interesting reading. Have you read it all? I could of course take further extracts from it and we could discuss your interpretation further - but I won't.

Val, and Bob, I have enough trouble getting my head around ME and all the stuff that my diagnosis attracts. I can't research and read all that I need to (apparently) to engage with you about GWS.

I have read the blog about the 'new' science. I can't say I have seen these ' two peer reviewed' papers making much of a splash elsewhere. But then I haven't/don't follow GWS. Maybe they featured somewhere I don't know.

I sincerely hope that those afflicted with GWS are shown some light in terms of a 'biological' cause from these two papers. I hope they prove to be 'game-changers' in terms of treatment and recognition as some seem to think.

Judging from the comments - some of the comments - there is a lot of doubt about that. There is also a feeling that any 'credible' cause has been hidden in some sort of mass conspiracy.

Again, I simply cannot get into all of this. Christ we get dragged into enough directions as it is and I can't handle another one. If you feel that Wessely is again being honoured for something he should not; then I am hardly in a position to dissuade you.

However, the arguments I have read that attempt to convey this are not convincing. Not to me anyway. If you feel that some who are working for 'us' should have been honoured then why not nominate them and their efforts in the future?

Anyone can do so - hell you can even do it on-line these days apparently.

Adios :nerd:
 

Firestormm

Senior Member
Messages
5,055
Location
Cornwall England

Good luck. I'd be interested to see how many sign this and what (if any) impact it will have. Not even sure if such a thing can be revoked because of even partial non-UK or public demand.

These honours are not democratic and never have been. Personally I think they should. Rather like the voting in charity award nominations that are all the rage today.
 

Jarod

Senior Member
Messages
784
Location
planet earth
I'd say leave the knighthood designation in tact, so we can see what kind of company Knighthood keeps.

Dr Simon Wessley, and Jimmy Saville, and Alan Stanford are the Knights that I know of; Other than Richard Branson......

Sir Alan Stanford($7 billion doollar ponzi scheme knight) is serving a 110 years in jail by the way......

We should start a petition for who else deserves knighthood!! George W Bush? Alan Greenspan? William Reeves? Dick Cheney? Donald Rumsfeld? Jerry Sandusky? Osama Bin Landen, Larry Silverstein. Michael Aquino (NSA)

How does one get KNighthood?

Anyone can nominate a British citizen for knighthood or other royal honors (although self-nomination is discouraged). Nominations from the public account for about a quarter of all recommendations
http://ask.yahoo.com/20020501.html

Somebody that is articulate please Go for it! :thumbsup:
http://www.gopetition.com/
 
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15,786
If you feel that Wessely is again being honoured for something he should not; then I am hardly in a position to dissuade you.

However, the arguments I have read that attempt to convey this are not convincing. Not to me anyway.

I dare say it's because you haven't read much of Wessely's research. Over the past week, I have.

He starts with the premise that CFS is just a point on the spectrum of fatigue. To him, CFS is Fatigue. Okay, fine - he can have his opinion.

Then he conducts studies on fatigued patients with somatic symptoms. Most of these studies involve the use of psychiatric questionnaires. Some of these questionnaires (such as the General Health Questionnaire) will interpret the symptoms of any systemic illness as indicating definite psychiatric illness. Wessely also shows a tendency to select non-somatization questionnaires where questions aimed at depression or anxiety are phrased in a manner that will come up positive for someone with significant physical or cognitive limitations. Then, based on the overlap of physical symptoms in both CFS and these questionnaires, he concludes that the vast majority of CFS patients have psychiatric disorder.

These psychiatric findings pair up nicely with his belief that CFS = fatigue. Additional symptoms can easily be blamed on psychiatric disorders, hence him waffling on repeatedly about outcome being worse with more severe psychiatric disorder/more symptoms. This allows him the much-used "out" of blaming the patient's beliefs about symptom causation for poor prognosis.

In psychiatric research with controls, the controls are typically poorly matched - people with illnesses that are not systemic, such as muscular disorder or broken limbs, or even healthy controls. Naturally those controls will have fewer physical symptoms and score mentally healthier on the carefully selected questionnaires.

Conversely, in physical studies he will sometimes exclude anyone with psychiatric disorder. Depending on the questionnaires or other criteria used to determine psychiatric disorder, this could have the effect of excluding CFS patients with much of anything other than fatigue.

In biological, but not psychiatric, research involving Wessely, there is always a disclaimer to the effect that all relevant physical findings are controversial and contradictory. When abnormalities are found, there is usually an attribution to psychiatric causation (based on the psychiatric questionnaires). On the rare occasion that there is not a psychiatric attribution, Wessely is usually far down on the list of authors, and he tends to ignore those papers in his future research - somewhat remarkable considering how extensively he cites to himself.

Then we get to treatment, which is aimed at changing the beliefs that are presumed to perpetuate symptoms. Wessely's vague grasp of ethics says it's wrong to lie outright to patients, but it's strongly recommended to fundamentally mislead them for the purpose of maintaining the doctor-patient relationship. He acknowledges that if most of us knew what the biopsychosocial school thought about our symptoms, we would walk out, and seek out doctors that will tell us what we want to hear (and condemn us to an eternity of illness in the process).

If you aren't willing to read his papers (it does impart a rather remarkable feeling of filth), the highlights are at http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/simon-wessely-quotes.21025/#post-319726 . Links to sources, mostly at his own website, are included, in case anyone is skeptical about issues regarding context and such.
 
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646
Not even sure if such a thing can be revoked because of even partial non-UK or public demand.
People should explore the legal and regulatory processes before setting petitions, it's not as if the internet isn't full of the damn stuff -

Forfeiture Committee: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honours_Forfeiture_Committee
Forfeiture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders...s_of_the_United_Kingdom#Refusal_or_forfeiture
Revocations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._medals_of_the_United_Kingdom#Knight_Bachelor

The only sort of modern precedent is Fred (the Shred) Godwin but like the other modern forfeitures this was based on behaviour following the award, not as a reappraisal of the grounds of award itself.

For anyone actually intending to petition the UK parliament there are two choices, the informal one: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/ which has no guarntee of being noticed (at least not without at least 100,000 signatures ) - or the formal one http://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/have-your-say/petitioning/public-petitions/. The formal one needs a sponsoring MP - but at least doesn't need the 17thC language that was required up until ten years ago.

Anyway, no one in Government or Parliament as a whole, at least not anyone with clout, is going to get involved in what looks like a snide campaign of disparagement against an eminent academic who works for the NHS and has worked specifically with 'wounded soldiers'. One might as well start a campaign to have Bradley Wiggin's stripped of his Knighthood on the basis of his having embarrassingly silly sideburns (and claim there is true !). The only thing that petitions like this do is add to Wessely's kudos amongst the Standing Up For Science afficianados and affirm the support of his colleagues at King's and elsewhere.

IVI
 

Bob

Senior Member
Messages
16,455
Location
England (south coast)
.I cant get these links to work, Bob.

Bob wrote '...Please take a bit of time to read the thread.

E.G., to answer one of your points:
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...-work-for-gws-and-me.21116/page-3#post-321327

E.G., read the comments under the blog linked to in the following post, to find out more about GWS patient opinions:
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...-work-for-gws-and-me.21116/page-3#post-321271 '

.

Sorry to confuse. They're just links to posts in this thread.
I was just directing Firestormm to earlier posts in this discussion thread.
 

orion

Senior Member
Messages
102
Location
UK
I just shrugged my shoulders when I heard this news. I mean does anyone still take the honours system seriously? You only have to look at the types of people who typically get given honours to realise what a joke it is - failed/has been politicians, shady businessman who have donated money to a political party, career civil servants, minor celebrities, the list of unimpressive, undeserving people goes on and on. Almost no one who gets a knighthood really deserves it. Jimmy Savile is just the tip of a very large iceberg.

Anyway, this latest award might give the impression that Wessely is currently untouchable, but let's not forget that Roy Meadows was also given a knighthood before his spectacular fall from grace.
 

Bob

Senior Member
Messages
16,455
Location
England (south coast)
The only thing that petitions like this do is add to Wessely's kudos amongst the Standing Up For Science afficianados and affirm the support of his colleagues at King's and elsewhere.

So does that mean that the patients' are at fault again?

As alex3619 said, a petition won't get the knighthood reversed, but it will send a message of, and create a record of, dissent.
 
Messages
646
So does that mean that the patients' are at fault again?
I dunno, are 'patients' collectively involved ? It's about choices and about how a minority (in this case 'us' collectively) choose to present themselves to the majority (rest of the world). At about this point in these exchanges someone usually pipes up about individual freedom - so yes folks who want to be free to sign up to petitions can do that, and folks like me who think that presenting a group collectively in a way that achieves no useful purpse are free to point out the futility of such actions.
As alex3619 said, a petition won't get the knighthood reversed, but it will send a message of, and create a record of, dissent.
A message to who ? Dissent from what ? No one with any influence on anything that has any relevance to research in to M.E/CFS or services for patients is going to give a stuff about dissent or its record. All this type of petition does(nonsensical as it is - all hooey about calling on the UK Government), if anyone outside the closed world from which they are generated, actually notices it, is confirm that there are a bunch of ill informed, bitter and/or uncharitable and/or obsessive people with axes to grind that lack any obvious legitimacy. For deserved parody see the products of Dave and Deirdre Spart, Private Eye ad nauseum http://www.private-eye.co.uk/eyeplayer.php?media=128

IVI