Professor Edwards has declared an interest in researching ME.
Someone above mentioned - if people could make-believe illness surely millions of people would be doing it.
As I said, studies have shown that 75% of insomniacs have no objective evidence of insomnia.
And a recent study of food intolerance found a staggering 90% to have no problems at all.
www.michaelvanstraten.com/factsheets/food_allergy.pdf
Based on research a staggering 12million people in the UK claim to have symptoms following ingestion of certain foods. Yet, if you do double-blind food tolerance testing, nearly all those people can eat those foods without symptoms. A small number really do have food intolerances though, they are the ones that need a cure.
As the researchers put it -"The problem of self-misdiagnosis is not helped by celebrity food fads, such as diets followed by Carol Vorderman and Victoria Beckham". These are to some extent cultural issues, self-imposed behaviours.
Does this cultural effect also cause fatigue? Can people adopt ME-like symptoms? How many people who think they have ME actually have ME?
These are all valid questions and the very questions that the original BMJ artilce raised - has ME largely become a meme? Rather than get angry at that, anyone who is really ill should want this issue debated, and sorted out.
So, just as food intolerance is real, and there is a real illness called ME, we need our researchers to realise the problem so that research for the people that really are ill can make a difference. Just as we cannot do research on everyone who "says" they have food intolerances to find a cure, we can't do research on everyone who "says" they have ME. Otherwise you get ridiculous and dangerous results.
Therefore, since Jonathan Edwards is involved in ME research, he needs (emphasis very strong) to talk with doctors such as Wessely so that his research does not become a horrible mistake.