Simon Wessely on XMRV

Holmsey may be acting like an arse by telling people off for their victimhood and anger while simultaneously admiting his ignorance and expecting others to do his research into SW for him, but some of his questions are worthwhile, and would be worth answering by those with an interest in WS (eg: what evidence is there that SW worked for unum, etc).

Some of the criticisms of SW do seem exagerated (the much used 'disgust quote is almost always out of context), and it's worth taking the time to sort the wheat from the chaff.

From my reading, it seems pretty clear that the man has been deluded by his own prejudices and made numerous claims about CFS which are unsupported by the evidence and have harmed CFS patients. Whether he worked for UNUM or not, his published work is enough to show the man's quackery. Holmsey is right that we shouldn't allow our legitimate anger at this to justify false or unsupported attacks against SW though, as this will only serve to (unfairly) discredit all atacks criticism of the man.

If Holmsey's willing to play devil's advocate, it would be worthwhile for those with an interest in SW to take him on and present their evidence, but it's also important to bear in mind the hardships that many CFS patients have had to endure and the appalling way many have been treated.

(I'm rather ducking out here, because I find reading the olders SW stuff leaves me fuming, and brings no benefit. If others are willing to take up the challenge, I'm sure we'd all be grateful though. Sorry for not being more constructive.)

 

That was a rhetorical question.

 

No you are wrong, and no, I am not. Acusations of interest yes, isolated, posts no.

Not sure how this impacts this particular point, but I hope with time your view will change.

Is there some bizzare code of ethics at play on this site that I'm missing, someone posted a damming inditement of SW which to me sounds true but which may or may not be...does't SW deserve a right of reply, which in fact may damn him more, or is this just a forum where you say what you want with anonymity, true or untrue but ok as long as it's what you feel?

Motivation, I want the truth, I want to know, for certain, sustainable in a court of law whether this man is causing me deliberate indirect injury, is misguided but sincere or missunderstood, I WANT TO KNOW and until telepathy is universal the only way I can do that is by testing claims to the truth.

Research, as opposed to this, so, there's nothing here worth having, is that what you're telling me?

Sorry, but I am trying, at Nuremburg the accused were given their say, it was up to the prosecution to PROVE (to the rest of us) where they were being truthful and where they were lying.

O what a gift it'd be tae gee us, tae see oursels as ithers see us.

Telll you what, I'm going to drop out for a while, you all chat among yourselves, I thought on signing up that this was a serious forum for debate but there's only a couple of you interested in that, the rest have forgotten that the truths is out there, not in your pocket (IMO).

I also think you've spent so long mutually supporting that many of you are thinking with a collective mind, and have equally lost any sense of why you've come together. Or maybe I've got it wrong and I need to find a different group of sufferers, a group who look forward and work toward change instead of lamenting all that has passed and idle their days away in mutual loathing of shared hate figures.

I hope you are able to take some of this on board for all of OUR sakes.

 

Holmesy,

There is no need to take my opinion so seriously. It is just my opinion. There are a range of opinions expressed on the board and you have been invited to contribute.

I have said my piece and have nothing more to add to this discussion. You need not concern yourself with more comments from me.

peace out,
koan

 

Holmsey,

This is classic SW smoke and mirrors stuff. He states that the position at Prisma was "unpaid", and never worked for UNUM, just gave a couple of talks. Were those talks paid for with honorarium fees? No word of that. You are dealing with true sociopathic personality, and are not going to get much in the way of truth out of the man, IMHO. Just gamesmanship, and poor gamesmanship at that.

I linked my source, which in turn quoted this site:
http://www.hfme.org/cbtandget.htm
This site goes into gory detail about some 53 or so separate SW conflicts of business interest, none of which I have taken the effort to verify. But it makes for interesting reading.

Since you are email chums with SW, invite him here to speak with us directly. I still remember how to cross-examine a hostile witness, and would love to ask him more about his financial ties to the insurance industry and connections to sales of CBT/GET to government interests. Oh, and for good measure, his work with the military on Gulf War Syndrome. And find out what brand of bike he rides; that will tell me everything.

Also Holmsey, when you hear a phrase like "as far as I can recall" from a sociopath, that is shorthand for saying "well, I have not even bothered to google myself on this point, because you seem like a gullible moron, and I really enjoy provoking the ME militant crowd":

http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/UNUMProvident_Sharpe_and_CBT.htm

Finding SW in contradictions and flat-out lies is like shooting ducks in a barrel. Please don't post any more SW quotations here until you google them first to see if he is having you on. I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you are being careless and provocative yourself. This is not that kind of forum. Wait until you have a real "bad patch" with your ME and have to resort to disability insurance related to your IT job to stay afloat. Then see what pal SW has been for you.

 

About my mate Holmsey...

I honestly believe that Holmsey is as wonderful and special as any of the rest of you wonderful people here in his bravery, dedication and commitment, struggling through the tough time he's had on this forum, to help us all be free of our attachment to SW, our obsession with one man, our attachment to our hatred. What value can it be to us that the only thing that unites us and defines us is the things we hate? And to personify those things in one man? I have no particular interest in communicating with SW myself, although I did say some very nasty and snide things about him earlier based purely on what others have said and what I've read, and I formed my opinion based on that. Fine: I still think that's a darn good basis for forming that opinion, and I'm not changing it one bit. But I've come to understand a bit more about the man himself and his situation lately, through imagining what his situation in life might now be, what the possibilities are, and one thing that shines through consistently is that thinking and obsessing about him is not healthy. But we've all been doing that for years and years, so it's not surprising it's hard to let go of that. His power over us is maintained by us as much as by him; we have the choice to ignore him. But we are here because we are defined by him, a definition that we all know no longer means anything if we are now XAND anyway, and none of that is important in the scheme of things anyway. Why limit ourselves?

A related question is: what would happen if half of us became XAND and half not? What would define this forum then? Would we all go our separate ways? Thanks if so, friends! That future reality of who we really are is just as true in the present, if we do not accept the labels assigned to us that we claim to despise.

We can easily cease being CFS/ME sufferers by the mental step of refusing the definition. It's just a name, a word, that ties us to him and him to us. OK it's similar to the name of this forum and perhaps to our diagnosis, but it's still just a label. Why not cast it off, and him with it? He'll get what's coming to him, no doubt about that.

And I'm disappointed, in a way, that I've not noticed on this thread much focus on who SW works for and has been working for. I've had a lot of jobs in my life, but never one without a boss, and I've seen that at the top of every tree, there's the big boss, the big daddy, and realised that even that guy has a boss too.

I'd love to know who else is responsible for all my suffering and for the suffering of the world, who else to blame, who are the other inhuman entities without soul or conscience and with no story to tell - a complete list. The idea that SW is the ruler of the multiverse and responsible for everything that happens in it, Holmsey understands the danger of that distraction. This is probably the hardest thing of all to let go of folks, it really is a hard thing Holmsey's asking here, and it's maybe too early for anyone to do it, but that's a shame. I had a Christian upbringing, ingrained in me, but I left there long ago and I've learned from many religions since. Zen is great! But struggling to synthesize all of these things gives a different perspective, and helps me understand that the Christian imperative of forgiveness is not quite what it appeared to be from inside the Christian religion. It's a bit deeper than that, does anybody have anything to say about forgiveness here? What effect do you think it might have on you and on the world to forgive SW? Is hatred of him, perhaps, just another attachment?

Or is it that hate is what this forum is all about? I didn't sign up for something where hate is a requirement. I feel unwell just from looking at the word, do you really love the feeling that much?

And all this from Mr Angry Old Man!

(Braces self...)

 

I was in a chat room and I was trying to explain to another woman who has CFS and lives in the UK that SW is in charge of ME there. She had never heard of him and asked me who he is. When I looked him up all I could find is that he is professor of Psychology, I think. I thought he was on par with Reeves but I can't find any evidence of that.

I'm hoping someone can explain this to me. Now that I've read through this thread I'm more confused than ever.

tee

 

if we stop talking to Holmsey

he will find someone else to talk to.

 

Teejkay,

http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/index.html

has a long list of well researched and fully referenced essays about all the problems we have had with psychiatric weasels in the UK.

SW loves to say how much we hate him and the threats he gets but it is all part of his game.

He made a big play of threat against him when he gave a lecture then filled the hall with school children and an eighty year old professor had to watch a feed from a side room. It was obviously designed to feed his vanity and so that the professor couldn't ask any awkward questions.

He has caused great suffering and has benefited greatly from it.

Fighting him and Peter White is something we are forced to do despite being seriously ill both for our own sakes and for those who are just starting their lives with CFS.

Talking about hate and where is forgiveness has nothing to do with our struggle. It is not a sign of hate to speak out against oppression. Should Martin Luther King have kept quiet?

We are fighting for the right to be treated exactly the same as someone with the same symptoms but a different diagnosis, no more no less.

Mithriel

 

'Fighting him', I'd like to hear about that, so what have you done?

'It is not a sign of hate to speak out against oppression', - Martin Luther King DID preach forgivness, but I would like to hear about your oppression, please print details.

'We are fighting for the right to be treated exactly the same as someone with the same symptoms but a different diagnosis, no more no less' - I'm up for a fight, so tell me about the 'fight'. I'd also like examples I can use when I join 'the fight' so please identify these other deseases which are treated differently?

 

I have ME.

Read the essays.

What is your history? If you have not suffered oppression we would all like to know where you live and who your doctor is.

How do you manage to survive, feed yourself, keep a roof over your head?

What are your symptoms, how disabled are you?

Your questions are meaningless. If you have to ask them what illness do you have?

Mithriel

 

Hi Mark, you know I have a lot of respect for what you've posted on the board since I registered but I took issue with some of what you said. I know you understand that it's all in the interest in debate and nothing personal but I feel I have something to contribute.

This thread is a about Simon Wessely, hence the topic is directed at Simon Wessely. To say that our 'hatred' (which I dispute, it is too emotive of a term and we are capable of assessing facts) of this one person is the only thing that unites us is to view our ME experience by looking through a hole in a fence at the issue. Or as a better analogy, to deduce our whole experience on the basis of one thread on a forum.

There is much that unites us as people with ME/CFS and because we are all individuals there is much that divides us. Just because we all have ME/CFS doesn't mean we should all get along and share the same view point, on ME issues or religion, politics, who should win The X Factor (don't watch, don't care).

As for 'freeing us from our hate' I'm really sorry, but that's a bit patronising. I'd also prefer if Holmsey spoke for himself. It's fine to stick up for him, but I'd rather hear his motivations from him. I don't think you're giving us enough credit as UK ME sufferers. We all have varying views of Simon Wessely but I think a discussion on the Wessely School would be worth while. I've been fortunate to get to know a lot of people with ME during my years online (since I was 17, I didn't know many people with ME for my first six years) and I've heard many personal stories of treatment prescribed by the Wessely School that are harrowing. Like I said in my last post, I don't want to share personal stories because it's not right for me to talk about those people and my friends.

Maybe we can ignore him, but if you are diagnosed and have failed to recover in your first year then you are in for a rough ride. You really are at the whim of your doctor and his 'belief'. The education that your doctor has depends on the treatment you get. Like my own personal experience, I've been confronted agressively when I said that I had ME, you hit a stone wall. Maybe you can ignore the man, but you cannot ignore the psychological paradigm in this country. It doesn't just effect the medical community but friends, family and coworkers who do not 'believe' us.

I hope you feel like you can release from your recently Wessely obsession but many of us are not obsessing. I haven't obsessed, I've managed to keep my head down since I was an adult and I've not thought much about him. Like many people I know who go to see their herbalist, osteopath, homeopath, naturapath or Buddhist preacher before seeing their doctor, they live their life around his influence. Again, I think you're getting too sucked into this thread which is natural when the whole ME world seems to be shifting around us as I type, creating a whole new XMRV-centric landscape.

Well you know my thoughts on that one already The problem being is that changing our own label doesn't change our position, we're still in the waste basket. We really have very little power, hence why we are so grateful and dependent on the work of the WPI. Changing your state of mind can help, but the change only occurs within, not with out.

Read this it's from Kings College London, it's a guide for physicians on their website. I found it was a beautifully worded example of knowing how to write publically. It is also a good example of how bad things can be done with a smiling face. In some ways, the doctor is encouraged to gain the patients consent to their new, potentially harmful, treatment. It is the insiduous nature and clever approach of the Wessely School which is why it is so successful in this country.

On the subject of who he works for, his role isn't as simple as just going up the chain. By that reasoning any decision made in any given day could be attributed to a handful of people. When looking at motivations 'follow the money' is always the first thing on the list to check. Wessely must take responsibility, as well as his colleagues, for their role, the buck cannot be passed ever upwards.

Again, you're framing of the debate around the word 'hatred'. This is disingenuous and ignores and invalidates rational feelings and beliefs. It is up to the individual to decide whether they've formed an informed opinion of Wessely or an unhealthy attachment, I think that maybe you're aiming your words at a specific audience that might best be served by a PM, but the debate and the history is not as simple as 'letting go of him' it's about the daily situation we are in. I'd like to mention the incident in the A&E again, even when going in foot a suspected broken foot, once the mention of ME came about in response to the question 'otherwise you're generally healthy?' she walked away and told us to go and come back if there was still pain tomorrow. The examination stopped immediately.

As for forgiveness that is an odd concept to bring into the debate. I understand you are trying to help people not focus on him, but I think most people are quite rational and foregiveness isn't a concept on the table. This isn't personal to me, it's about psychology being given too much weight and the driving forces behind the conviction that ME is perpetuated by innappropriate illness beliefs and in the cases of children, parental enablers of illness behaviour. Maybe I don't feel the need to forgive him because I don't hate him. I don't know, I just don't understand forgiveness when it has a bigger concept, it's the Wessely School, not just Wessely.

Mark, go to the Community section. If you seriously think that this board is just about hate then you've been spending way too much time in this thread. Your comment 'do you really love the feeling that much?' is rude and patronising. I'm not going to say there is no hate on this thread, but to lump us altogether as a hateful forum is grossly unfair and I'm surprised to see you write that. I truely am.

Quite right.

 

If you want to be all enlightened, it's all just attachments. Some attachments are more reasonable than others though.

I think that forgiveness requires an acceptance of guilt and honest attempt to make amends from the perpetrator.

The complete failure the psychological lobby to be honest about past failings has left many patients instinctively sceptical of all psychological CFS studies. Which is pretty understandable - it's as if (pardon the imo-mild hyperbole here) Holocaust deniers have moved on to an examination of the Arab-Israeli conflict and expect to be taken seriously by Jews.

Personally, I think some of the recent research on Sustained Arousal, etc seems promising. It's just so hard to know when there does seem to have been such institutionalised prejudice surrounding CFS. This is the primary problem I have with SW etc. They've promoted such transparent quackery, it leaves us unable to trust the medical profession, and reduces us to prowling the internet reading medical rumours which, at least I, have neither the energy nor expertise to properly judge. The fact they now dress up their old beliefs in gentle and obscurantist language only serves to makes matters worse.

Until there's some measure of accountability for past failings (revenge!) it will be very difficult for many informed CFS patients to see psychological explanations and treatments for their illness as anything but a continuation of the bigoted quackery we've seen before. Accoutability is needed for forgiveness and for people to be able to move on, whether CFS is best understood as a primarily physical, viral, neurological or psychological illness.

 

FACT ONE:

Who de-railed the Wessely thread?

Someone called Homlsey did, a 'new' member.
Suddenly this person accused me (and automatically everyone else) of wallowing in their own demise by speaking the truth.

Where did this person come from and why did they appear - specifically on this thread?

If a person is to join a thread on child sex abuse, and defend offenders telling all the members of the forum they are wallowing in their own demise. What does this mean, why would that person join the forum to say that, and what would be their motives?

Do people say, now now, don't use the C word, or the B word towards child sex killers, that's naughty. That's excitable, that's hateful, that's getting OTT.
Do they? No. Not at all.

The situation with 'CFS' is no different whatsoever.
An abused person, is taken advantage of and that is that.
An abused CFS patient (of any age) is taken advantage of that that is that.

An abused person often kills themselves in adulthood.
An abused CFS patient often kills themselves in adulthood (highest cause of death, statistically).

An abused child is warned never to tell, who can they tell?
An abuse CFS patient (of any age) is not allowed to tell, there is no one to tell.

Is that fact or fiction? We know the answer.

''Regarding this entire posting, well balanced, fair, constructive, reasoned, rational and appealing. None of these words apply, and on that note I'll leave you to it, sorry, I'm not up for adding victimhood to my list of ills and I'm struggling to see that this site is about anything else but wallowing chest deep in it' ' - Holmsey.

No one would ever write such a thing, who has been abused or has feelings for others.
PERIOD. We all know this, no matter your incredible tale that is meant to mirror ours.

It's not my place to tell others, how they can react in a negative light to holocaust.
So I don't. Do I post messages in forums about 'gay bashing' and tell them to get a grip?
No. That would be cruel, arrogant and sick.

Tell me, are these responses written to violent attack survivor forums?
It is the most disgraceful, callous thing, I have EVER read in all my life.

A few days later, this person's new friend - suggests we should forgive people and get on with things, as they feel our pain too.

Tell me, are these responses written to survivors of bullying?
People who are now only able to have a form of identity by being transgendered, or non confrontional, or by being unable to say a word because they are ruined, traumatised and trashed?

How is a long term 'CFS' patient any different?
We all share the same link and there is NO SHAME in victimhood.
This is EXACTLY what our attackers what us to feel.

Who would suggest forgiveness towards someone with zero remorse?
Do we forgive other killers - with no remorse? Or are they jailed?
Do we forgive serial killers with no remorse? Or are they disposed of?

All evidence on the biological mechanisms of 'CFS' was ignored by the
people we are meant to forgive, who still claim this evidence doesn't exist.

When people quote Psychiatirsts calling us ''disgusting'' (Just as Nazi's called the Jews/Gypsies/Disabled the same words)- the enemy accuses us of being hateful for quoting referenced sources as 'hate'. Presumably on that logic - in court when a victim of a crime states that their attacker did a certain deed - the judge then stops the victim and calls this 'hate'? Err, no.

This mirrors the rapist who says that women 'asked for it' by wearing a short skirt walking along a darkly lit street at 4am. The rhetoric is familiar here. Total lack of feeling, and linking to the crime. It wasn't me govenor...... I was just doing my job. Well too bad.

I can forgive any one who abuses me for fun for 18 years and denies any knowledge of it and suggests I am the wrong doer - after their pulse stops.
(This is exactly what happens with capital punishment in the USA), given to all mass murderers.

My opinion is mirrored by anyone who has experienced sustained sexual, psychological, physical abuse and watched their attacker gloat - seemingly above the law - immune to all prosecution. That is something never to be forgiven. Often attackers will text, write messages to their victims - proving they are invulnerable to being caught. In 'Science' Psychiatrists/Psychologists do this by producing 'Evidence Based Research' trying to claim a dysfunctional mindset of people with CFS who are 'fearful' of exercise - as a universal trait. For example, Psychiatrists like to say people with CFS admitted to hospital commonly have 'Sexual Problems'. Do Psychiatrists say the same of Indian people admitted to hospital? Or single parents families? Or people with receeding hairlines?

Abuse is historical, engraved, and forever. Eventually, a karma payback experience is activated however. I pray every day that God will enable this and it's happening already.

Within 5 years many of us will be 'enabled' through the use of powerful immune drugs. Many of us will then return to strength, able to work out in gyms and obtain impressive and lithe musculature and defend ourselves with strength that was seemingly lost when our 80yr old parents spoon fed us. Others will embrace academia, gaining qualifications in their now (immense) knowledge and experience in the field of health and medicine. Some will becomes Doctors, Nurses, Psychologists. Some may well wish a quiet life, others do not.

Our lives will return.

It would be most unfortunate if the gloating abuser who preaches we forgive them (with no remorse) bumps into their victim in court, most unfortunate.
The day will happen, as the victims of 'CFS' number not in their thousands, but millions. Patients will queue up to sue those who blamed them for their own suffering - on the basis of prejudice, bigotry, and disinformation.

Most people on this forum are female. Females are not as driven by equal amounts of hormones that can pump iron as males. A hormone linked to aggression and dominance. Additionally, (despite this) many females are unaware of the power inside their physique/minds as they are nurtuted to be 2nd class, submissive and docile. Never to question. To be 'sweet'.

The only people who gain from this - is men. Only in the late 1960's did Women begin to gain equality. That is outrageous in itself. If women 'need' men - then women must compromise, and thus weaken themselves.

Women learn in the playground as 5 yr olds, that males can be bullies nasty and even dangerous - they are forced to adapt to survive. Women thus understand and appreciate who/what a bully is. Males, do not. Males win arguments with violence - this starts in the playground also.

'CFS' is biologically, mostly a womens disease. There are no swathes of boxers, martial artists, and weightlifting women up in arms with 'CFS'.
(This is to the benefit of the medical policy of eugenics on 'CFS').
Especially when 'CFS' gives such bone crusing exhaustion and crippling disabilty.

Where are the healthy men screaming and shouting their girlfriends, wives, mothers, sisters are being left to rot with CFS? There are gay rights marches, religious marches - but CFS marches? Psychiatrists convinced the public the plight of CFS sufferer wasn't really as bad as they make out. No one came to women's rescue and I feel furious about that. This was all done by the cult of psychiatry - making CFS a non complaint. Not that big of a deal.

If 'CFS' has been mostly a male disease, there would have been far more excitement on the streets, protests and battles. It was a gift to the invaders that this was not the case. Women are smart, they have to be to survive in an un-equal society - yet this smartness made women invisible.
No riots, protests, etc. Just wonderful blogs and books. The fury and the rage was metabolised and processed in other ways that can soon be used.

Women historically gained rights, by becoming visible through direct action.
Not by submitting to people who deny them the right to even breathe.
Through disease this happened, and through psychiatry tricking the general public - this happened also. Women were not saved by their healthy men folk defending them - due to disbelief.

I will defend myself, and (women) with merciless veracity from the Nazi medical programme currently in place. This can and will be done in a court of law, with medical evidence. Power and strength can be a defensive mechanism - and 'fight' can be put into producing documentation on illegal medical practice. That is already happening in thousands of people's homes as we speak. As men who gain health at the WPI in years to come get out their gym shorts and 20lb bicep weights to re-claim their indentity, women will take on the tactic that had contained them and yet will liberate them.

Knowledge.

Quotes from medical records, memories of abuse, files that pile up - that patients kept. Medical policy local and national exposed. All this will return to the source. And when it does, they will be no mercy and no surrender.

Who advised on government policy?
Who produced this research?
Who employed them?

Never give in, and never give up I say. We all know this.

If I was to 'forgive' those and roll over on my belly like a kitten - I would excuse what has been done. Which is why a tiny proportion of 'new' people on here are asking for precisely that. They are asking for surrender.
And signing up in user names from the British Psychiatric profession thinking it's hillarious and no one notices.

It is my duty to God to defend the vulnerable, and to defend myself.
No one is idiotic to fall for any 'forgiveness' as if we did, we would all suddenly suffer from an amnesia of who did what, and when and become defenceless. This is again, precisely why people ask for this to happen.

We all remember with crystal clarity, and all of us (even bed ridden) are pin sharp in recalling the horrors.

Runner boys, return to your base camp with the bad news and dirty white flag of your own insignia - defeat is imminent. Liberation is coming for those with 'CFS'. And for the people who say hate and stress is harmful - well I told you that when you abused me and you never let go. Now it's our turn to sharpen the dagger and plunge fear into your hearts through academic presentation of the facts of what happened to 'CFS' patients.

Your fear will not be the emotional/physical torture you put us through, but:

Fear of exposure of willfull neglect of patients
Fear of exposure of manilpulation and censure of medical science
Fear of exposure of links to corporations with vested interests.

I forgive no one, and forget nothing.
I'm becoming human again, and growing stronger by the day into remembering I'm no longer your slave.

Post to other vulnerable and crippled people maybe with less determination.
On here you will find many that can live 10,000 days with an infection.
Our determination is pathalogical, unable to be silenced.

Quoting medical research by the psychiatric profession is not wallowing in self pity - it's a presentation on the truth. If you don't like reading it, then you shouldn't have produced it or condone it.

Feel our battle cry scream, and start running towards the book of excuses.
Because to explain how an infectious retrovirus - was concealed for 20+ years - through blaming (sometimes) terminally ill people, and very much so desperately ill people............

Is going to take one hell of an excuse.

Asking the victim to decease in educating others through suggesting a character fault (misery, victimhood) - 'aint of them that will work.

 

Thank you for this passionate statement, Cold Taste. Your rhetoric is powerful, reasoned, clarifying and caring.

Cecelia

 

Hi Mithriel,

I know all the evil SW has done to PWME in the UK and it is very tragic. What I want to know is how does he have so much control and power over the entire medical field in the UK? It seems he is "in charge" of ME in the UK? Is he?

Why would Reeves be meeting with him multiple times, I believe, if he is just a Psych professor?

All I can find is this from Wiki:

 

put into a small box

Katie, I did read "this" from King's College.

I'll not be commenting on this thread in general because it's outside of my knowledge and experience. But reading through this article "CFS and the Facts of Life - An Article for Clinicians" was an experience unto itself.

I started out thinking "What's wrong with this?" It all sounded very true and reasonable, even helpful. But somewhere along the way I started noticing myself feeling smaller and less certain. I would hear myself say "Yeah, but . . ." until by the end I felt that I had been put into a small box which had no way out. There is so much good in what is being offered (I'm not saying this facetiously). But . . . That it is not appropriate in and by itself, and that it does not offer what is truly needed, makes it not just unhelpful, but harmful. And scary. And by making completely unavailable what might truly help, it becomes despicable.

It reminds me of a story in the Chronicles of Narnia (and my memory is very fuzzy here and I don't have the books with me) where the children are in the underworld and the Queen is telling them that there is no sun, that they've just imagined it. Some kind of magic sleeping powder has been thrown into the air and there is the thrum thrum thrum playing all the while. It takes a valiant effort on the part of one of the characters to break the spell. I would say that that is what is trying to happen on this thread. (I think the story is powerful and I wish I could tell it better.)

Thanks, Katie, for posting this link.

 

hate

sorry i m writing this without reading the whole thread

i think hate is one of the basic self defence mechanisms of human beings and it is only wrong when it s not proportional to the intensity of the offence and it can and should end when the attack/danger is over , which is obviously not over ..

 

Teejaykay,

I have often wondered how the wessely school have gained such a position of power.

Some thoughts are these.

He is well connected. There was always an "old boys" network in Britain and he is a personal friend of Lord Sainsbury who was in or on the edges of the government.

He talks well. They use words rather than facts so the story they tell sounds plausible and feeds into the listener's prejudices, weak neurotic women, free loaders etc.

Scientifically, if that is the right word , all their research is done using questionnaires which can by typed into a computer, the numbers put into a statistics program and instant paper. It is cheap and quick, especially compared to painstaking biochemical experiments.

They use each other as referees so they get published easily, thus building up a vast volume of "research" where the quantity makes it look independent and as if different groups are confirming the results but they actually are not.

Biochemistry is HARD. A paper which says that x% have depression is much easier to understand and remember.

After a while they had so much of this research that they became experts and now were in a position to veto biomedical papers and research.

They manipulated the NICE guidelines so that only RCTs were considered yet they were the only people who had been given enough money to run RCTS.

Effectively they have subverted the scientific process.

A strange facet of our times is that politicians are no longer embarrassed to be caught out in a lie, similarly he will happily lie. When questioned on television about the Ean Proctor case, the child who was taken from his parents and thrown in a swimming pool, he said he had had nothing to do with it despite his signature being on documents.

Whether there is a more sinister background I do not know, but it has all been a very good example of how to build a career.

Unfortunately they have managed to manipulate things so that the fact that no one who had ME when he started has got better is lost among the numbers who had a self limiting post viral or have a psychological illness that can be helped by their treatments.

Mithriel

 

Thank you Mithriel. That helps explain it. Okay. Now I have a handle on it. I appreciate that and I think that your post is the best explanation I've seen on why it is SW has such a stranglehold on ME in the UK. I sure hope that soon it won't be that way.

tee