An Unbelievable Podcast by Wessely on BMJ Website:
http://podcasts.bmj.com/bmj/2010/03/05/chronic-fatigue-syndrome/
Wessely wants everyone at home to know that EVEN IF XMRV WERE FOUND TO BE THE CAUSE, MEDICAL THERAPIES WOULD BE INAPPROPRIATE!!
He then says "We're not going to go doing more and more tests to find out what was the virus because, frankly, even if we found it there's nothing we're going to do about it. We're in the business of rehabilitation."
(at 10 minutes 20 seconds)
And then the interviewer repeats this uncritically in summary at the end!
I you are pressed for time start the podcast around 9minutes, 30 seconds.
Wessley is smart. He sure knows how to pull a scam with carefully crafted and continuous PR. His job title should be UNUM propoganda minister because that literally is his full time job. As we all know, it certainly isn't science.
Someone has written a very nice response below it. Highlights:
My comment to the podcast:
http://podcasts.bmj.com/bmj/2010/03/05/chronic-fatigue-syndrome/
Wessely wants everyone at home to know that EVEN IF XMRV WERE FOUND TO BE THE CAUSE, MEDICAL THERAPIES WOULD BE INAPPROPRIATE!!
He then says "We're not going to go doing more and more tests to find out what was the virus because, frankly, even if we found it there's nothing we're going to do about it. We're in the business of rehabilitation."
(at 10 minutes 20 seconds)
And then the interviewer repeats this uncritically in summary at the end!
I you are pressed for time start the podcast around 9minutes, 30 seconds.
Wessley is smart. He sure knows how to pull a scam with carefully crafted and continuous PR. His job title should be UNUM propoganda minister because that literally is his full time job. As we all know, it certainly isn't science.
Someone has written a very nice response below it. Highlights:
The issue is this- take two distinct illnesses, anorexia nervosa and cancer, both of which are characterized by weight loss. Then create a waffling name such as ‘Chronic Weightloss Syndrome’, or ‘CWS’, and allow individuals such as Prof. Wessely and his colleagues to pollute the ‘CWS’ research literature with studies characterized by all manner of vague inclusion criteria and questionable methodologies which end up showing whatever it is the authors designed them to show. Then trumpet these false studies in uncritical and biased medical journals such as the BMJ instead of rigourous and well done studies on well defined patient groups.
-John
-John
Post by justinreilly:
BMJ: Helping Doctors Make Worse Decisions
John hits the core issue right on the head. The "Wessely School" came up with and use the patently flawed "Oxford 1991" definition of "CFS", which is merely idiopathic chronic fatigue, i.e. nothing more than chronic tiredness not caused by a known disease.1 This is a transparent attempt to create confusion and doubt by lumping all unknown causes of fatigue into "CFS" rather than defining ME/CFIDS as the unique neuro-endocrine immune disease it is. BMJ continues to publish studies based on the spurious Oxford definition despite receiving critiques every time they publish these invalid studies. This Oxford definition is used by the Wessely School, including the Dutch researchers in this issue of BMJ, to produce meaningless results so they can say 'let's just treat them with CBT and GET (graded exercise)."
A hallmark of ME/CFIDS is Post-Exertional Morbidity- the worsening of the disease upon minimal exertion. The Wessely School CBT/GET treatment is: telling patients they do not have an organic disease, that exercise has been proven to only help, not harm them and then making patients exercise. This results in a tremendous amount of iatrogenic physical morbidity.2 Unlike the Oxford definition, the Canadian Government ME/CFS Definition created by consensus of many of the world's top ME/CFIDS clinicians and researchers, deliniates and explains the (considerable known) pathophysiolgy of this discrete disease.3
Wessely says, in the accompanying podcast, that even were XMRV found to be the cause of ME, the exclusive treatment would remain CBT/GET. Well, is the treatment for AIDS still to tell patients they don't have illness other than symptoms caused by the stress of being gay and they just need to exercise? History has shown that finding a retroviral cause and treating with anti-retrovirals significantly reduces patients' illness burden even more than Wessely's therapy of telling a patient he is not really sick.
For the story of the Wessely School's war on science and ME patients, please see Prof. Malcolm Hooper's recently published "Magical Medicine" free, infra.4
1. Sharpe MC, Archard LC, Banatvala JE, et al. (February 1991). "A report--chronic fatigue syndrome: guidelines for research". J R Soc Med 84 (2): 118–21. PMID 1999813.
2. Neuro Endocrinology Letters, Sep 15, 2009;30(3):284-299. PMID: 19855350, by Twisk FN, Maes M. ME-de-patienten Foundation, Limmen, The Netherlands; Clinical Research Center for Mental Health (CRC-MH), Antwerp, Belgium.
3. www.mefmaction.net/documents/me_overview.pdf
4. http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/magical-medicine.htm
BMJ: Helping Doctors Make Worse Decisions
John hits the core issue right on the head. The "Wessely School" came up with and use the patently flawed "Oxford 1991" definition of "CFS", which is merely idiopathic chronic fatigue, i.e. nothing more than chronic tiredness not caused by a known disease.1 This is a transparent attempt to create confusion and doubt by lumping all unknown causes of fatigue into "CFS" rather than defining ME/CFIDS as the unique neuro-endocrine immune disease it is. BMJ continues to publish studies based on the spurious Oxford definition despite receiving critiques every time they publish these invalid studies. This Oxford definition is used by the Wessely School, including the Dutch researchers in this issue of BMJ, to produce meaningless results so they can say 'let's just treat them with CBT and GET (graded exercise)."
A hallmark of ME/CFIDS is Post-Exertional Morbidity- the worsening of the disease upon minimal exertion. The Wessely School CBT/GET treatment is: telling patients they do not have an organic disease, that exercise has been proven to only help, not harm them and then making patients exercise. This results in a tremendous amount of iatrogenic physical morbidity.2 Unlike the Oxford definition, the Canadian Government ME/CFS Definition created by consensus of many of the world's top ME/CFIDS clinicians and researchers, deliniates and explains the (considerable known) pathophysiolgy of this discrete disease.3
Wessely says, in the accompanying podcast, that even were XMRV found to be the cause of ME, the exclusive treatment would remain CBT/GET. Well, is the treatment for AIDS still to tell patients they don't have illness other than symptoms caused by the stress of being gay and they just need to exercise? History has shown that finding a retroviral cause and treating with anti-retrovirals significantly reduces patients' illness burden even more than Wessely's therapy of telling a patient he is not really sick.
For the story of the Wessely School's war on science and ME patients, please see Prof. Malcolm Hooper's recently published "Magical Medicine" free, infra.4
1. Sharpe MC, Archard LC, Banatvala JE, et al. (February 1991). "A report--chronic fatigue syndrome: guidelines for research". J R Soc Med 84 (2): 118–21. PMID 1999813.
2. Neuro Endocrinology Letters, Sep 15, 2009;30(3):284-299. PMID: 19855350, by Twisk FN, Maes M. ME-de-patienten Foundation, Limmen, The Netherlands; Clinical Research Center for Mental Health (CRC-MH), Antwerp, Belgium.
3. www.mefmaction.net/documents/me_overview.pdf
4. http://www.meactionuk.org.uk/magical-medicine.htm