It was a majority decision, which seems to suggest that one of the three tribunal members was against us and it could have been a close thing!
On page 2, I was pleased to see us referred to as “people suffering from “chronic fatigue syndrome””, rather than “patients”, which as I’ve said before implies we have a meaningful relationship with the health services and access to medical care, which we don’t. This gets even better on page 6 when CFS is replaced and we are just referred to as “ME sufferers”, which is exactly what we are.
Pages 14-15 are just brilliant. The argument that the data is not anonymous is dismissed by referring to a 2008 amendment to the PACE trial protocol in which says “all the data will be completely anonymous”. Prof. Malcolm Hooper and David Tuller get a mention, as does the theft of a digital audio recorder and undeclared links to insurance companies.