Simon Wessely in New Scientist

[worldbackwards]

"Rituximab? I invented it mate"

 

[nasim marie jafry]

Hey, Is it okay to post a link on Twitter to these papers of Simon's - it's a great comprehensive list & means he is not being misquoted (he uses that as a defence). I am not sure of the 'rules' of posting links to Phoenix even though forum is available to public, so will not tweet til someone says is okay to do so. Many thanks!

 

[Esther12]

Hey, Is it okay to post a link on Twitter to these papers of Simon's - it's a great comprehensive list & means he is not being misquoted (he uses that as a defence). I am not sure of the 'rules' of posting links to Phoenix even though forum is available to public, so will not tweet til someone says is okay to do so. Many thanks!

No rules against and I'm sure Val didn't want it to be a secret.

 

[Esther12]

Cort has written about Wessely's change of tune:

http://www.cortjohnson.org/forums/t...-cbt-icon-calls-for-big-rituximab-trial.2727/

Cort posted a link to the unreliable quotes. Doh - that thread seems to always come up high when people google for Wessely quotes, even though there are problems with them acknowledged by all, and a link to more reliable quotes inserted on the first post. I think it must have been linked to by some high traffic site and it's now self-perpetuating.

 

[Sasha]

Cort posted a link to the unreliable quotes. Doh - that thread seems to always come up high when people google for Wessely quotes, even though their are problems with them acknowledged by all, and a link to more reliable quotes inserted on the first post. I think it must have been linked to by some high traffic site and it's now self-perpetuating.

It's a pity, because if people construct easily refutable arguments from out-of-context quotes then that serves no-one.

 

[Liz Willow]

SW tweeted 6 hours ago,

"No shift. any promising treatment, be it CBT, GET or rituximab, needs a big trial. First two have them, third not yet"

This speaks for itself.

 

[nasim marie jafry]

Thanks, @Esther12, I did tweet the link. I have had a very quick look at some of the papers, but it is just so distressing to see Ramsay-ME so arrogantly & blatantly buried in psychobabble in the nineties. Because I was diagnosed in 1984 - got ill 1982 - everything SW says feels quite personal. It is thanks to Behan/Ramsay I was diagnosed after 18 months of illness - they were my saviours. And then SW just comes along 7, 8 years later and mows it all down. I just don't understand.

 

[Aurator]

SW tweeted 6 hours ago,

"No shift. any promising treatment, be it CBT, GET or rituximab, needs a big trial. First two have them, third not yet"

There are just a couple of problems with that statement.

CBT and GET were never promising treatments to anyone with any appreciable first-hand experience of this disease, and their "big trial" was a valueless sham, as has been amply and repeatedly demonstrated.

To make a comparison between PACE and the current work going on in Norway with the implication that the latter has to be conducted with and be subject to the same rigour as the former is ironic in the extreme. No-one questions the need for phase three trials for Rituximab, but any fool can see that PACE and all its feeble aftershocks were scarcely even scientifically meaningful. Pardon the French, but either the man has an incurable idée fixe or he takes us all for fools.

 

[Sean]

Pardon the French, but either the man has an incurable idée fixe or he takes us all for fools.

Or both.

 

[redaxe]

Psychiatry is the one branch of medicine that has the least accountability to the scientific process and the uses highly subjective diagnostics.
Couple that with the amount of control the doctor has over the patient and pretty obvious to anyone that abuses are going to happen.

If you want to read a horror story that happened in a middle class suburb in Sydney back in the 1980s check this story out - this is one of the worst ever scandals to rock psychiatry

http://chelmsfordhospital.blogspot.com.au/p/outside-influence.html
http://www.susangeason.com/darktrance.html

 

[Valentijn]

Hey, Is it okay to post a link on Twitter to these papers of Simon's - it's a great comprehensive list & means he is not being misquoted (he uses that as a defence). I am not sure of the 'rules' of posting links to Phoenix even though forum is available to public, so will not tweet til someone says is okay to do so. Many thanks!

You're more than welcome to link to my list at http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/simon-wessely-quotes.21025/

 

[nasim marie jafry]

@Valentijn It's a great resource, thanks so much for doing this. I would bet, as we speak, that Sense about Science are preparing Simon's 'I discovered Rituximab' medal - such is the self-congratulatory, deluded state of UK medical establishment when it comes to ME. Truth takes a backseat. It is chilling. I very much hope that as the biomedical evidence becomes more robust that the psych lobby is finally forced to retreat. PwME then might actually have a chance of treatments that will help us - and not harm us - and we will have the respect we deserve as a patient population that has long been denied us..

 

[biophile]

Did someone mention Sense About Science? Their policy seems to work something like this:

 

[user9876]

The saddest part about that for me is not that he views ME as a mental illness - he's just wrong - but it made me wonder if CBT gets used much for people with serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

So I had a very quick look - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25574773. They (not necessarily Wessely) believe that CBT tackles the underlying cause of schizophrenia. Which is interesting, because the single biggest risk factor appears to be genetic. Psychological factors get thrown in the mix of course but, basically, it's not known what caused schizophrenia. More evidence of deluded psychiatrists?

There has been quite a debate around CBT for psychosis (inc schizophrenia). Keith Laws published a meta analysis showing no benefits but some groups continue to promote CBT. There was a maudsley (kings?) debate where psychiatrists seemed to want to ignore the evidence of no improvement. The SMC have also been over promoting and spinning some trials to quite a dangerous extent.

 

[Snow Leopard]

"Been my view since start of career which is what I mean by no shift."

This is what happens when you spend too much time listening to politicians. You start speaking in a slippery manner.

 

[SilverbladeTE]

If he was right, if he was as great as he thinks he is, he'd have queues of patients miles long, and cures for all of them
He doesn't, so he's a f'ing arrogant useless ratbag who has actively help to prevent the research and treatment of several ailments ruining the lives of MILLIONS of sick and dying people
He shouldnt just lose his medical licence, he should lose his liberty in penal servitude until death

,!,, Wessely
Any man of decency, compassion or honour would have given abject apologies and help undo harm many years ago

 

[Aurator]

He shouldnt just lose his medical licence, he should lose his liberty in penal servitude until death

It's good to have moderate voices like yours on the forum. Presumably you'd be in favour of granting him a fair trial prior to the guilty verdict and the penal servitude: a jury picked entirely from long-term ME sufferers, a hooded judge, a right to any lawyer he wants from a list we will have been good enough to supply him with.

Everybody has a right to a fair trial, and "I don't care how unpopular that statement makes me".

 

[alex3619]

If fair trials were available then we would see lots of psychs going to prison. Yet this is rare.

 

[Aurator]

If fair trials were available then we would see lots of psychs going to prison. Yet this is rare.

Indeed, and far from trying to correct Silverblade's views over what should happen I was indulging in an expanded version of his own fantasy, knowing as well as you do and he does that genuine justice is very unlikely ever to be done in this case. I was using the term "fair trial" ironically.

 

[alex3619]

My comment was also a bit ironic ... pity irony does not come over well in text, doh.