The Countess of Mar was once again defending people with ME/CFS in the House of Lords yesterday, this time in a debate about medically unexplained symptoms (MUS).
The transcript, below, can be read in situ from the website,
TheyWorkForYou. You should note that I am only reporting here on the section of the debate that featured ME/CFS, and not in its entirety.
The debate followed the publication in February of a report by the
joint commission for mental health on medically unexplained symptoms, and it was in this report that ME/CFS was mentioned by way of an example.
Lady Mar (pictured) raised a number of important issues, and again received confirmation from the Government that ME/CFS was recognised as a neurological condition in accordance with WHO classification, but as a disease with unknown origin.
She was not happy to learn that ME/CFS had been listed as a medically unexplained condition by some clinicians when no specific definition for MUS appeared to exist.
She said that in some instances the treatments were wrong, short-lived and potentially damaging to health, and that the PACE trial – which appears to have underwritten CBT and GET – had now been discredited.