Medical Scandal
Part 1/3: THE MENTAL HEALTH MOVEMENT: PERSECUTION OF PATIENTS?

THE MENTAL HEALTH MOVEMENT: PERSECUTION OF PATIENTS?

A CONSIDERATION OF THE ROLE OF PROFESSOR SIMON WESSELY AND OTHER
MEMBERS OF THE "WESSELY SCHOOL" IN THE PERCEPTION OF MYALGIC
ENCEPHALOMYELITIS (ME) IN THE UK

Background Briefing for the House of Commons Select Health Committee

Is it the case, as demonstrated in a TV documentary, that multi-
national corporations and not governments now control the world?
Are powerful and influential psychiatrists who work within the
Mental Health Movement linked to the multi-national corporations
that now dominate and control medical and research institutions and
whose life-blood is profit? (Politics isn't working: the End of
Politics. Cambridge academic Noreena Hertz presented evidence that
multi-national corporations are taking the place of elected
governments. ITV Channel 4, 13th May 2001)

To the detriment of the sick, the deciding factor governing policies
on medical research and on the management and treatment of patients
is increasingly determined not by medical need but by economic
considerations.

Document prepared for the Countess of Mar by Malcolm Hooper,
Emeritus Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, in collaboration with
members of the ME community, Department of Life Sciences, University
of Sunderland, SR2 7EE, UK

December
2003

CONTENTS

Executive Summary

Brief Introduction

The Mental Health Movement

What is the problem?

What is the "Wessely School"?

The Opinion of a Queen's Counsel

Are psychiatrists cruel?

Two illustrations of the implementation of Wessely School policy

The case of Ean Proctor

The case of Child X

The formal International Classification of ME by the World Health
Organisation

Current Government policy concerning ME

What is ME and is it the same as CFS?

What is CFS?

Are both camps looking at the same disorder?

Some published views of the Wessely School on ME

Illustrations of Wessely's influence over the national perception of
ME

The UK Guide to Mental Health in Primary Care

The NHS Information Authority (NHSIA)

The House of Commons Library

The Official Secrets Act

The Media

The Medical Trade Journals

Disgraceful treatment of patients

A medical insurance company's perception of ME

Illustrations of Wessely's influence over the international
perception of ME

The Australasian Report on CFS (2002)

A Canadian medico-legal reference book (2003)

Tactics of denial employed by Wessely School psychiatrists

Denial of the known and available evidence

Tactics of denial used in relation to ME/CFS

The Joint Royal Colleges' Report on CFS (1996)

Comparisons with a contemporaneous American Report

The Chief Medical Officer's Working Group Report on CFS/ME (2002)

Undeclared competing interests

The disability insurance industry

The published views of Professor Anthony Pinching

The York Systematic Review of the literature

The Medical Research Council Research Advisory Group on CFS/ME

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Graded Exercise

Report of the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and
Technology on MRC

A chemical link?

Conclusions

Suggested Further Reading

Appendix I ---Quotations from the published works of Simon Wessely
on ME/CFS

Appendix II -Quotations from the published works of Michael Sharpe
on ME/CFS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Evidence is presented in this document to show that

o In the UK, patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME, also
known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or CFS), particularly children,
have suffered gross and barbaric abuse and persistent denigration as
a consequence of the beliefs of certain psychiatrists who are
attempting to control the national agenda for this complex and
severe neuro-immunological disorder

o These psychiatrists are shown to be clearly in breach of the
first tenet of medicine --- first do no harm--- in that by their
words and deeds they have wreaked havoc in the lives of ME/CFS
patients and their families by their arrogant pursuit of a
psychiatric construct of the disorder which ignores the abundant
clinical and scientific evidence (widely presented in the
international medical and scientific literature) of the organic
nature of ME/CFS
o There have been persistent and frequently covert attempts by
these psychiatrists to subvert the international classification of
this disorder, with destructive consequences for those affected

o To the serious disadvantage of patients, these psychiatrists
have propagated untruths and falsehoods about the disorder to the
medical, legal, insurance and media communities, as well as to
Government Ministers and to Members of Parliament, resulting in the
withdrawal and erosion of both social and financial support

o Influenced by these psychiatrists, Government bodies such as the
Medical Research Council have continued to propagate the same
falsehoods with the result that patients are left without any hope
of understanding or of health service provision or delivery. As a
consequence, Government funding into the biomedical aspects of the
disorder is non-existent

o This coterie of psychiatrists has proven affiliations with
corporate industry and has insidiously infiltrated all the major
institutions, directing funding for research into an exclusively
psychiatric model of the disorder, focusing on "management
strategies" involving psychiatric techniques, even though such
techniques have been shown to be at best of no lasting value and at
worst to be harmful to patients with ME/CFS

o The same psychiatric model has been extended by these
psychiatrists to a number of other disorders including Gulf War
Syndrome, fibromyalgia, multiple chemical sensitivity and chronic
low-dose organo-phosphate poisoning, leaving many other people
without the help and support they so urgently need.

THE MENTAL HEALTH MOVEMENT -- PERSECUTION OF
PATIENTS ?

A consideration of the role of Professor Simon Wessely in the
perception of myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME): A matter for the
Select Committee on Health

NB. For brevity, not all references are cited in the text but all
are available on request from the Countess of Mar, House of Lords,
London SW1A 0PW

Brief Introduction

The matter for scrutiny by the Select Committee on Health concerns
myalgic encephalomyelititis (ME) and is straightforward:

(i) is the Department of Health's current and
proposed policy on the management of patients with ME as provided
and promoted by psychiatrists of the "Wessely School" (see below)
harmful to patients and

(ii) are such patients being abused as a consequence
of scientific misconduct?

ME has been formally classified by the World Health Organisation
(WHO) in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) as a
neurological disorder since 1969, but psychiatrist Simon Wessely
advises Government that the disorder does not exist other than as
an "aberrant belief" that one has a disorder called ME. He refers
to "chronic fatigue syndrome" (CFS) and asserts that CFS is a
somatoform (psychiatric) disorder in which patients produce physical
symptoms as a means of expressing emotional distress.

This is at variance with the WHO classification of the disorder:
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is listed in the ICD as a term by which ME
is also known and according to the ICD, the two terms are
synonymous, thus "CFS" does not represent a psychiatric disorder
even though Wessely School psychiatrists assert that it does.

Of potential significance is the fact that American researchers have
demonstrated that in ME/CFS, a particular pathway in the body which
is affected by viruses can also be affected by chemicals and it is
known that ME/CFS can be either virally or chemically induced
(Interferon-induced proteins are elevated in blood samples of
patients with chemically or virally induced chronic fatigue
syndrome. Vojdani A; Lapp CW. Immunopharmacol Immunotoxicol
1999:21: (2):175-202)

For at least a decade, questions about possible scientific
misconduct and flawed methodology by Dr (now Professor) Wessely and
his group of co-psychiatrists have been raised and published in
international medical journals but it is only relatively recently
that his long-time involvement as medical adviser to commercial
bodies having a vested interest in his publications on ME has been
exposed (see below).

There is no question that many millions of pounds sterling are at
stake and that the vested interest groups for whom these
psychiatrists act as medical advisers would like to prevent
insurance cover for ME patients (those with a psychiatric label are
denied medical insurance cover); prevent disability payments to
them; prevent successful liability lawsuits and maintain the
supremacy of their industries (see below).

Increasingly, it is now "policy-makers" and Government advisers, not
experienced clinicians, who determine how a disorder is classified
and managed in the NHS: the determination of an illness
classification and the provision of policy-driven "management" is a
very profitable business.

The situation is admirably set out in a letter dated 29th December
2003 to the e-British Medical Journal from Angela Kennedy, Social
Science Lecturer at the Open University:

"I suspect that psychiatry, if it is not careful, will eventually
become most ridiculed over its adherence to one theme: that
of 'somatization'. Presently, sufferers of Myalgic Encephalitis
(sic) (also called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) are increasingly
subject to medical negligence or even abuse because the huge body of
international bio-medical evidence is ignored, especially in
Britain, in favour of an unfortunately incomprehensible, incoherent
and empirically inadequate theory.

"The categorization of an illness as being psychosomatic also means
a further categorisation of an individual as 'deviant' rather
than 'ill', so that they are denied sympathy, support, and even
benefits they are entitled to. Categorised as 'deviant', the ill
then suffer increasing social exclusion and material inequalities.

"The main problem with somatization theories is that they cannot be
either proven or disproven and therefore are not very 'scientific'
at all.

"In relation to ME/CFS at least, flawed, unsubstantiated theories
have been uncritically adopted and treated as 'fact', even against
the already substantial (and substantiated) body of bio-medical
evidence which continues to grow.

"The material effects of such sloppy 'science' have had two main
consequences for ME sufferers: firstly, the medical impairments of
the illness have often been ignored and left untreated, and many
sufferers therefore become severely disabled, their physical health
absolutely devastated and their chances of a restoration to good
health uncertain at best. Secondly, children in particular end up
victims of institutional abuse (though this can happen to adults
too). In the case of children, they may be forcibly removed from
their concerned parents and subjected to draconian 'treatments' that
could, quite easily, be termed abuse.

"The capacity for abuse of institutional power appears to have
increased enormously, and this is becoming most evident in the
fields of health care and particularly psychiatry. How such problems
are addressed will determine the future of such disciplines, as far-
reaching demands for justice from those who are faced with or
survive such institutional abuse are inevitable, and this will lead
to a critical review of medical practice, both from other
disciplines, and society at large".

The Mental Health Movement

In 21st century medicine the Mental Health Movement is politically
correct and immensely powerful: it is backed by the giant chemical,
pharmaceutical and insurance industries which are now the funders
and controllers of both undergraduate and post-graduate medical
education. In the UK, these industries have known links to research
funding bodies such as the Medical Research Council (MRC) and as a
result, a vast amount of public money is presently being provided in
an attempt to strengthen the currently weak psychiatrically-driven
research evidence that behaviour-modifying "chronic illness
management strategies" are effective.

As a consequence, the MRC has decided not to fund urgently needed
biomedical research into complex and devastating disorders such as
myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).

Also relevant may be the Council of Europe Strasbourg Convention on
Human Rights and Biomedicine, which confers rights including
provision for drug and other medical trials on human beings which in
certain circumstances could be carried out without the individual's
consent: this applies to three groups of people in particular:

(i) those who are deemed to be mentally ill

(ii) those for whom no other known treatment is
effective

(iii) children

The Convention (not yet ratified by the UK) specifically states that
in certain situations, "general interests" will take precedence over
those of the individual.

Concurrently, in the UK, proposals for the Reform of the Mental
Health Act were drawn so widely that they would give psychiatrists
far greater powers to enforce compulsory psychiatric treatment upon
both adults and children: proposals included provision for
psychiatrists to be able to drug people (including children against
the wishes of their parents) if they have "any disability or
disorder of the mind or brain, whether permanent or temporary, which
results in an impairment of mental functioning".

Mental Health Movement advocates claim that disorders such as ME and
CFS come into what they call the "medically unexplained symptoms"
category (known as MUS or MUPS, which stands for "medically
unexplained physical symptoms") and that such disorders are
psychogenic in origin; contrary to established principles of
scientific investigation and discovery, these psychiatrists assert
that "if all you look for are biomedical explanations, you're
missing the whole picture" and that if Government wants to solve the
waiting-list dilemma (which it does, for political reasons), "they
will have to channel serious money at this problem" by funding
psychiatric management regimes
(http://www.thes.co.uk/search/story.aspx). The implications of the
implementation of this policy are already spiralling out of control.

On 4th May 2000, a letter from the Office of the Minister of State
at the Department of Health (signed by John Hutton) seemed not to
rule out the re-classification of ME/CFS as a "mental" disorder,
stating it was unlikely that the proposed reforms to the Mental
Health Act would affect such patients (quote) "even if (ME/CFS)
were reclassified as a mental rather than a physical disorder".

In October 1999 Dr Michael Sharpe (a psychiatrist and prominent
member of the Wessely School) gave a lecture at the University of
Strathclyde at which he said: "Purchasers and health care providers
with hard-pressed budgets are understandably reluctant to spend
money on patients who are not going to die and for whom there is
controversy about the 'reality' of their condition (and who) are
undeserving of treatment".

Are those with other classified neurological disorders
also "undeserving of treatment"?

Infiltration of institutions by vested interest groups was the
subject of an article by George Monbiot published on 9th December
2003 in the Guardian (Invasion of the Entryists), from which the
following extracts are taken and to whom acknowledgement is made:

"One of the strangest aspects of modern politics is the dominance of
former left-wingers who have swung to the right. The "neo-cons"
pretty well run the White House and the Pentagon, the (UK) Labour
party and key departments of the British government. But there is a
group which has travelled even further to the extremities of the pro-
corporate right. Its tactics (involve) entering organisations and
taking them over. Research published for the first time today
suggests that members of this group have colonised a crucial section
of the British establishment. The organisation began in the late
1970s as a Trotskyist splinter; it immediately set out to destroy
competing oppositional movements. In 1988 it set up a magazine
called Living Marxism (known as) LM. By this time it had moved to
the far right and was led by the academic Frank Furedi who started
writing for the Centre for Policy Studies (founded by Keith Joseph
and Margaret Thatcher) and who contacted the supermarket chains,
offering, for #7,500, to educate their customers 'about complex
scientific issues'. In the late 1990s the group started
infiltrating the media, with remarkable success. In 2000, LM was
sued by ITN after falsely claiming that (its) news journalists had
fabricated evidence of Serb atrocities against Bosnian Muslims. LM
closed, and was resurrected as the web magazine Spiked.

"All this is already in the public domain. But now, thanks to the
work of researcher Jonathan Matthews, what seems to be a new front
in this group's campaign has come to light. Its participants have
taken on key roles in the formal infrastructure of public
communication used by the science and medical establishment.

"Its participants (work) for the PR firm Regester Larkin, which
defends companies such as the biotech giants Aventis, Bayer and
Pfizer against consumer and environmental campaigners.

"(One of its participants) is Fiona Fox, who is the director of the
Science Media Centre (which) is funded, amongst others, by the
pharmaceutical companies Astra Zeneca, Dupont and Pfizer. Fox has
used the Science Media Centre to promote the views of industry and
to launch fierce attacks against those who question them.

"Are we looking at a group which wants power for its own sake, or
one following a political design? The scientific establishment
appears unwittingly to have permitted its interests to be
represented to the public by the members of a bizarre and cultish
political network. Far from rebuilding public trust in science and
medicine, this group's repugnant philosophy could finally destroy
it".

Of significance to the ME community is the fact that Spiked's health
writer is Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, well-known for presenting and
promoting the views of Professor Simon Wessely and for his perverse
and immoderate attacks on those with ME. One such article can be
found at http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000002D3B6.htm
(SPIKED: Health: 17th January 2002: "ME: the making of a new
disease"). Referring to the then newly published Chief Medical
Officer's Working Group report on CFS/ME (see text), Fitzpatrick
roundly derided the CMO, Professor Liam Donaldson: "The CFS/ME
compromise reflects a surrender of medical authority to
irrationality. The scale of this capitulation is apparent when
Professor Donaldson claims that CFS/ME should be classified together
with conditions such as multiple sclerosis and motor neurone
disease. The effectiveness of the ME lobby reflects its middle-
class base."

Also of significance is the fact that in its NOTES FOR EDITORS,
Spiked states that Professor Simon Wessely is available for comment
or interview and can be contacted through Sandy Starr at Spiked
(0207-269-9234).

Of relevance to the ME community is that fact that Lord (David)
Sainsbury (Science Minister -see text) is a keen supporter of the
Science Media Centre. It is Lord Sainsbury's Linbury Trust that
since 1991 has financially supported studies of chronic fatigue by
psychiatrists of the Wessely School.

Information on the GMWATCH website (www.gmwatch.org) is also
important to the ME community. By 2003, Lord Sainsbury had donated
over #11 million to the Labour Party. Mark Seddon, a member of
Labour's National Executive Committee, told the BBC "In any other
country, I think a government minister donating such vast amounts of
money and effectively buying a political party would be seen for
what it is, a form of corruption of the political process".

For some, the choice of an unelected biotech investor and food
industrialist to be Science Minister is more than emblematic of the
UK's corporate-science culture.

In a recent Financial Times article, Lord Sainsbury cites the
following statistics: British universities spun off 199 companies in
2000, up from an annual average of 67 in the previous five years.
The UK's ratio of companies to research spending is now more than
six times higher than the US. "It's a dazzling record", Lord
Sainsbury is quoted as saying.

Not everyone shares Sainsbury's enthusiasm. Professor Stephen Rose
of the Open University Biology Department is among those who have
commented critically on this emerging corporate science
culture: "The whole climate of what might be open and independent
scientific research has disappeared".

What is the problem?

The problem is that the Mental Health Movement does not restrict
itself to mental disorders and ME has been the subject of
unremitting psychiatric spin since the late 1980s: although ME is
not classified by the WHO in the ICD as "mental", in the UK it is
being high-jacked and covertly re-classified as "mental" by a small
but influential group of psychiatrists known colloquially as
the "Wessely School" (Hansard: Lords: 19th December 1998:1013 - see
below) who have their own vested interests in casting their net of
illness control ever wider. They have proposed a hypothetical model
that cannot be tested experimentally and it is this group of
psychiatrists who are the most assiduous advocates of the Mental
Health Movement in the UK, to the extent that, in the case of ME,
they have been shown to have created their own conclusions before
generating the data which would support such conclusions.

The prevalence of ME/CFS is higher than for multiple sclerosis,
which in the UK affects about 83,000 people; in January 2002 the
Report of the Chief Medical Officer's Working Group (see below) gave
a UK population prevalence of 0.2 - 0.4% (ie. up to 240,000
affected people). Certainly the incidence is known to be rising: as
long as a decade ago, UNUM (one of the largest disability insurers)
reported that in the five years from 1989 - 1993, disability claims
for this disorder increased by 460%. In terms of insurance costs,
ME/CFS came second in the list of the five most expensive
conditions, being three places above AIDS.

At the publication of the UK Chief Medical Officer's Working Group
Report on "CFS/ME" (see below), the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) went
on public record on BBC News on 11th January 2002 stating that the
treatment of "CFS/ME" must improve and that it should be classed as
a chronic condition with long-term effects on health, alongside
other illnesses such as multiple sclerosis and motor neurone
disease. It was not only Dr Fitzpatrick of Spiked who disagreed
with the CMO: the week after the CMO made his announcement, the
British Medical Journal (BMJ) highlighted the view of a prominent
member of the Wessely School (psychiatrist Michael Sharpe) that
doctors would not accept a particular strategy just because the
CMO's Report recommended it.

Whether ME and CFS represent the same disorder or are two different
entities has engaged many health care professionals, especially
certain psychiatrists, in an often hostile political battle. These
psychiatrists advise Government that ME does not exist as a separate
entity; that "CFS/ME" is one and the same disorder and that it is a
mental disorder which must be "managed" by mind-altering
psychotherapy, despite the fact that, accepting that CFS equates
with ME, international non-psychiatrist experts consider it to be a
physical (ie. organic) neuro-immunological disorder and that there
is a significant literature which supports an organic pathoaetiology.

In the UK, the primary duty of care for the sick has been displaced
in the fierce battle for supremacy waged by this group of
psychiatrists. Because personal status, competing personal
interests, commercial interests and massive funding issues are
involved, battle lines remain drawn and it is the patients who are
caught in the cross-fire. As Shakespeare noted: "As flies to
wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport" (King
Lear, Act IV Scene I).

What is the "Wessely School"?

UK policy concerning ME is based on the intransigent beliefs of a
group of psychiatrists led by Simon Wessely, for years an adviser to
various Government Departments including the Ministry of Defence and
who is now Professor of Epidemiological and Liaison Psychiatry at
Guy's, King's and St Thomas' Medical School (GKT) based at King's
College Hospital (KCH) and at The Institute of Psychiatry (IOP); he
is also Director of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Research Unit and
of the Gulf War Illnesses Research Unit, both at King's. Other
leading members include psychiatrists Michael Sharpe (formerly of
Oxford and now at Edinburgh, where Alan Carson now collaborates with
him); Peter White (of St Bartholomew's Hospital, London); Anthony
David, Anthony Cleare, Stephen Reid and Matthew Hotopf of The IOP
and KCH and Richard Mayou, Keith Hawton and Christopher Bass of
Oxford. Trudie Chalder, a former Registered Mental Nurse, works with
Wessely and her name often appears on their publications and in
funding applications. Other supporters include Elena Garralda,
Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at St Mary's, London;
Tony Pelosi of Glasgow; Stephen Lawrie of Edinburgh; Alison Weardon
and Leonie Ridsdale, Senior Lecturer in General Practice at Guy's,
King's and St Thomas', London.

The stated aim of Simon Wessely is to "eradicate" ME from the
medical lexicon and to re-classify CFS as a mental disorder which
does not need biomedical research or explanation and which is to be
managed by a version of cognitive behavioural therapy which he
claims to have developed. His own commercial involvement in such a
management regime has been established (see below).

The certainty of these psychiatrists that they are right whilst
other researchers of international repute who disagree with them are
wrong, their power and their influence are destroying countless
lives, yet they continue to fly unscathed even in the face of
substantial evidence that calls their views into question.

Wessely School psychiatrists have built their careers and
reputations on denying the physical nature of ME/CFS, with the
result that untold numbers of chronically and seriously ill patients
are bullied, derided, threatened and driven to suicide by being told
that they are not physically ill but are suffering from "aberrant
illness beliefs".

The constant theme running through the work of this group of
psychiatrists is that CFS is a somatoform disorder and that factors
such as female gender, too much focus on normal bodily sensations,
specific personality traits, avoidance behaviour, learned
helplessness, faulty thought processes, lack of motivation,
inadequate coping strategies, interpersonal conditioning and
contagious sociological hysteria play an important role in the
perpetuation of the disorder.

Wessely School psychiatrists have been described in the eBMJ (N
Portman, 3rd December 2003) as "a small clique of undemocratic,
unaccountable, self-serving psychiatrists who have managed to
monopolise most of the research funding in this field and, thanks to
their prejudices, have been its downfall ever since".

Without doubt, the influence of Simon Wessely has resulted in a
cascade of horrors which most people in the UK do not know about and
when they do, they find scarcely believable.

It has taken 25 years for the notorious Professor Sir Roy Meadow to
be exposed and discredited as "world expert" on Munchausen's
Syndrome by Proxy, whose views Lord Howe described as "one of the
most pernicious and ill-founded theories to have gained currency in
childcare and social services in the past 10 to 15 years. It is a
theory without science. It rests instead on the assertions of its
inventor". The downfall of Meadow, who is finally to appear before
the Professional Conduct Committee of the General Medical Council,
serves to prove that a so-called "medical expert" whose views
apparently portray incontrovertible medical judgment and certainty
may, in fact, be wrong, but the damage done cannot be undone. So it
is with ME. It must not be allowed to take 25 years before the
views of the Wessely School on ME are subjected to similarly
rigorous public examination and exposure.

Many doctors and their non-medical managers still have misguided
ideas about medical negligence and believe that doing one's best is
all that matters or is required. This is not so in law and the
legal profession is about to become less deferential to the medical
profession.
(http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters.327/7424/1118#41799)


The Opinion of an eminent Queen's Counsel has been obtained

A leading QC and member of the House of Lords was asked for an
Opinion on the Wessely School approach to ME: that Opinion is
unequivocal; it states: "On the document you have sent me there is
an overwhelming case for the setting up of an immediate independent
investigation as to whether the nature, cause and treatment of ME as
considered by the Wessely School is acceptable or consistent with
good and safe medical practice. There is substantial doubt as to
whether such could be the case. A formal request should be made to
set up an enquiry. It is essential that a reputable firm of
solicitors should be instructed".

Are psychiatrists cruel?

Based in New York, Dr John Diamond is a founding member of The Royal
College of Psychiatrists. In an extract from his recent book (Facets
of a Diamond 2003) in the October 2003 issue of the journal "What
Doctors Don't Tell You", Diamond says "I am no longer a
psychiatrist. I renounce it because I believe cruelty is at the
core of the profession (and) I believe that there is something
inherent in the profession that tends to bring out any cruelty
lurking within. I have long wondered why this profession --- which
ought to be so compassionate - has, it seems to me, turned its back
on humanity".

A recent article in The Sunday Telegraph ("Trust me, I'm a
psychopath" by Alasdair Palmer, 30th November 2003) quotes Dr Robert
Hare, a Canadian professor of psychology, as saying "The psychiatric
profession and its associates are very reluctant to admit they are
wrong or that they have made a mistake".

Yet psychiatrists have powerful positions of control and ever more
credibility in so many areas: Simon Wessely and Anthony David were
funded by the US Pentagon (and came to the conclusion that Gulf War
Syndrome does not exist) and Wessely is involved with advising
NATO. Add to this the errors of mis-diagnosis made by psychiatrists
in the past (Parkinson's Disease, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy,
diabetes, thyrotoxicosis and many other disorders with a physical
causation have all been asserted by psychiatrists to be "mental"
disorders until medical science revealed their true aetiology) and
one has a right to despair at the current situation facing ME
patients.

Cont/ Jan 18