The Significance to ME/CFS of the Landmark Change to the UK Law on Consent.

[Countrygirl]

https://www.facebook.com/notes/rosi...the-uk-law-on-consent-stephe/1015971038446096

The Significance to ME/CFS of the Landmark Change to the UK Law on Consent. Stephen Ralph 30th Dec 2015

If anyone was enrolled for CBT or GET and were not explicitly told about the possible negative side effects – and then got more ill as a result of that “treatment” then you need to go to your local CAB and get some good advice. The only way to actually make a difference is to find a way to fight back and make it hurt for those who were negligent. Fighting back in this way will force the NHS and the medical profession to change their behaviour towards their patients. I have now realised that so many doctors ruin people’s lives yet they go on to have lucrative successful careers leaving a trail of destruction behind them..... Their destruction needs to come back to bite them – to hold them fully accountable. This is why the information below is so important to those who have suffered and to those still suffering.

Best regards to all, Stephen.

All doctors, researchers and health professionals who have for years prescribed CBT/GET without fully informing patients of risks, alternative treatments etc have been in breach of these GMC guidelines on consent. * * * In the UK , CBT is mainly prescribed as in the discredited PACE trial : "to change the behavioural and cognitive factors assumed to be responsible for perpetuation of the participant’s symptoms and disability", whilst GET is prescribed to correct the assumed deconditioning and exercise intolerance caused by these wrong cognitions. (11, 16) (emphasis added) However, the scientific evidence clearly shows these assumptions are wrong: the disease is not perpetuated by patients' aberrant cognitions and behaviour, it is perpetuated by on-going physical disease processes and therefore the use of CBT/GET as treatments for ME/CFS is scientifically invalid and potentially harmful.

That ME/CFS is a serious organic disease has been highlighted in two major, independent reports on ME/CFS published earlier this year in the US:

1. The Institute of Medicine report: "Beyond Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Redefining an Illness" commissioned by the HHS, NIH, CDC, AHRQ and the FDA. (12)

2. The National Institute of Health Pathways to Prevention report: "Advancing the Research on Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome". (13)

Their conclusions were based on comprehensive reviews of over 9000 peer reviewed research papers and testimony from expert researchers and clinicians in the field. Both reports concluded unequivocally that ME/CFS is a serious physical disease, not psychological: "The literature review found sufficient evidence that ME/CFS is a disease with a physiologic basis. It is not, as many clinicians believe, a psychological problem that should not be taken seriously. A primary message of the report is that: ME/CFS is a serious, chronic, complex, multisystem disease that frequently and dramatically limits the activities of affected patients. In its most severe form, this disease can consume the lives of those whom it afflicts. This message should reassure the millions of people with the condition that their concerns are, indeed, legitimate, while sounding a wake-up call to clinicians and research funders that ME/CFS deserves closer attention."

(14)

 

[Bob]

Good to see this getting around the community. Here's the original and full version:

The Significance to ME/CFS of the Landmark Change to the UK Law on Consent
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...ndmark-change-to-the-uk-law-on-consent.41989/

 

[Daisymay]

In the article I did say:

"All doctors, researchers and health professionals who have for years prescribed CBT/GET without fully informing patients of risks, alternative treatments etc have been in breach of these GMC guidelines on consent."

I'm sorry but I wasn't meaning to encourage anyone to take action through the GMC or legally if they had been harmed with CBT/GET in the past, prior to this change in the law, I was merely stating a fact.

And when I went on to quote from the IOM report it wasn't right after that sentence or in the context of that sentence. There was a clear break in the article and a new section.

I'm not a lawyer so this is just my understanding, I think it would be very difficult indeed for anyone to take action retrospectively on the basis of breach of the 1998 GMC guidelines on consent if they had been made worse with CBT/GET.

How would patients be able to prove to the GMC or in a court of law that they hadn't been told of risks? It would be their word against the doctor unless there is documentation, a consent form which clearly shows they weren't warned of all material risks.

But even if they had, what objective evidence, tests of before and after, would patients have that they had been made worse? A patients word wouldn't count.

And the biomedical evidence from years ago, there would be no IOM report to say ME/CFS is a serious physical disease.

Plus it would be argued the doctors were following the NICE guide lines which had gone through a judicial review to show they were OK etc etc.

And how would anyone get funding to take a case? Or who could afford to take a case ?

I'm sorry but I think to even contemplate taking any action would be very unwise and nigh on impossible.

 

[minkeygirl]

If this was in the US, where people sue McDonald's for leaving a pickle off their burger, people for sure would sue if for no other reason than to embarrass them and bring it to light. And attorneys would take the cases pro Bono for the attention/notariety.