http://www.parliament.uk/business/p...todays-lords-debates/read/grandcommittee/965/
That is the transcript. The arguments raised were not addressed, instead general and weak counter arguments were used. This is spin in action, and coming from multiple parliamentarians it is very disappointing.
All made a point to state, clearly, that CFS/ME is a serious illness. Then they claim all sorts of general platitudes and support for the PACE trial, mention a few facts (many of which are wrong or highly distorted versions of the truth) and then pass the debate to the next speaker.
" She also asked whether the trial data could be reanalysed. As she will know, there are ethical and legal barriers to releasing data to a member of the public without consent when these data contain medical information that might identify the patient."
This claim by Baroness Northover is an example of the kind of thing I see all the time: technically correct, highly misleading, total spin. It would probably take a data processing operator less than an hour to assign everyone numbers instead of names. Patient privacy would then be assured. The data can then be re-analysed. This information should
already have been public, the data should
already be in a form to be made public, this is not a valid claim. Indeed, the actual request is not to make it public, but to make it available to independent experts for re-analysis.
Lord Winston:
"There are many other names, but these are very prestigious departments of medicine. Effectively, they all come to the same conclusion; namely, that at the present time, the best treatment is almost certainly along the lines of cognitive behavioural therapy."
This is highly misleading. Many experts think the psychiatric research is just wrong.
"What is different about the PACE study is that it is a detailed, controlled study which has extremely rigorous entry into it." Rigorous entry? Seriously? I laughed out loud when I read this. I am still chuckling over it. How can he be serious?
"It means that it is extremely comprehensive, so there are very good data. It looked at a series of issues about treatment and it seems pretty clear to me that cognitive behavioural therapy is effective in something like one-fifth of patients, which is a bit more successful than the noble Baroness claims."
It would have been more comprehensive, and have physical evidence to back (or refute) their claims if they retained the actometers. This one-fifth claim is also highly debatable.
It seems there are many errors and distortions in the replies. Maybe we should pick it apart, or maybe we should move on to other things.
This is what I call a whitewash: political spin to maintain the status quo.
Bye, Alex