Letter to The Observer
Susanna Agardy
RE: Chronic fatigue syndrome researchers face death threats from
militants Scientists are subjected to a campaign of abuse and violence
Robin McKie, The Observer, Sunday 21 August 2011
Following this article the Observer should call itself Wessely's Bugle.
It joined the media herd later than others but made up for it by
stepping up the hysteria.
The reporter made no attempt to explore what might be behind the claims
by Prof Wessely et al and proceeded to portray ME/CFS sufferers as a
dangerous species.
She could have asked Wessely if he and colleagues have in fact done work
for insurance companies and considered the conflicts of interest
arising, or, how it is that if he was forced to give up ME/CFS research
years ago, his name appears on two such reports published in the last year.
Concerning the recent PACE study he was involved in, it is not just a
matter of patients and 'activists' 'not liking' it as he claims. Some
serious concerns are raised by this research and patients' lives are
bound to be significantly affected. He dismisses all this. He puts
freedom of information requests and criticism of his research on a par
with threats. These are legitimate parts of science and democracy and
he should only be concerned about them if he expects to remain
unaccountable. His various Bugles have let him get away with all his
complaints about these things with no challenge.
Perhaps the psychiatrists could consider how their own behaviour might
have contributed to this situation. The article fails to mention that
Wessely has been taunting and ridiculing ME/CFS patients for years,
denying their illness. Psychiatrists should have enough insight into
human behaviour to realise that if you suppress, invalidate and
generally drive to desperation a group of people, unfortunately, some
eventually react in desperate and unreasonable ways. In the case of
ME/CFS such people can only be the ones with a modicum of energy. As
McKie describes, most suffer with too much pain, exhaustion and a host
of other symptoms to even consider such things.
Then again, we are not even sure who is included in Wessely's group of
maligned 'activists'. It seems he includes anybody who does not fully
agree with his research and pronouncements.
If The Observer is interested in balancing its story of threats with
stories of psychiatric abuse of MECFS patients, the story of Sophia
Mirza might be a good place to start. She died as result of ME/CFS at
age 32, but not before being subjected to ignorant and brutal treatment
at the hands of psychiatry. Please note the post-mortecom findings in
her story.
http://www.sophiaandme.org.uk/sophia%20&%20m.e.%20her%20story.html
This time, just in case his claim seemed too outrageous before, Wessely
insists he is not joking when he says he feels safer in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Has he checked with the families of those killed at the
British Council in Kabul and the thousands of civilians and soldiers
killed and maimed in these countries?
Will The Observer do an objective, balanced report on ME/CFS in the
future and give patients and critics of the research promoted by Wessely
a voice? At present this newspaper looks very much captive to his
self-serving perspective.
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