This is the third of three articles on the subject of myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME, ME/CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome) and a current media campaign which is targeting patients. You can read the first one here and the second one here.

The background to a medical scandal

As I discussed in the first article, there is currently a coordinated media war against chronically ill and disabled people who live with ME. This is because of patients and supporters’ objections to PACE trial – a study which defined treatment for them.

The second article looked at one of the reasons why this media war is happening. Now, here’s what I believe is the most important narrative. It’s exactly what PACE trial has done to many people living with ME – and those chronically ill people not living with it.

As I previously wrote for The Canary:

For decades (and often still to this day), the medical profession has not properly recognised it. People living with ME have been disbelieved, stigmatised, given incorrect treatment, or told it’s ‘all in their heads’.

But there are effects of the PACE trial on chronically ill and disabled people that are not often discussed. They can be absolutely devastating.

Diagnostic chaos

Firstly, I think the issue of misdiagnosis by medical professionals is a massive one. As I’ve previously written, my girlfriend Nic was parked with a fibromyalgia diagnosis for years. But I don’t think she’s alone.

Research shows that between 2001 and 2013, diagnoses of ME/CFS fell by nearly five percentage points. During the same period, diagnoses of fibromyalgia increased by nearly six percentage points, sharply increasing around the time PACE trial was introduced:

Coincidence? Make your own minds up.

Moreover, diagnoses of fibromyalgia are highest among the poorest in society. For CFS, they’re the lowest:

For me, this is due to several factors.

Rampant classism

Firstly, many people in the poorest communities don’t have the privilege [pdf] of further/higher education to be able to get their heads around complex medical conditions (NB. “Lowest SES quintile group” below = poorest in society):

Trust me, this has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with your postcode. The dickhead Boris Johnson and his private schooling is a prime example of a person being educated beyond their intelligence. But when you haven’t been taught how to analyse complex pieces of writing or interpret reports, it puts you at a medical disadvantage.

Then factor in time poverty (more prevalent in working class/poor communities) and people often don’t have the head space, either. So, people will simply trust what a doctor tells them, never questioning their diagnoses. You can count parents and children in this, as well – who are often told their agony and symptoms are just ‘growing pains’.

But what would make for interesting reading would be a study into how many people, previously diagnosed with fibromyalgia, but who stepped outside establishment medicine for help, ended up finding out they were actually living with diseases and illnesses like connective tissue disorders like Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Lyme, Lupus, Cranciocervical and Atlantoaxial Instability – and, of course, ME – just to name a few.

Medical arrogance

From the other direction, you have an arrogant medical classism and misogyny from some doctors. ‘They’re poor, so they must be stupid. What do they know?’ Exhibit one, m’lud:

But you also have an ingrained belief in what they’re taught. It’s this unflappable trust in ‘science’ (even when the science has been repeatedly disproved, like PACE trial has) which leads to blanket dismissals of certain illnesses and misdiagnoses of others. It’s where the term ‘Zebra‘ comes from, in part. It’s because medical professionals think that the simplest diagnosis is the correct one:

When you hear the sound of hooves, think horses, not zebras…

I’m sure that two of PACE trial’s chief proponents, Professor Michael Sharpe and Simon Wessely, are not bothered by this. After all, they seem to buy into the idea that medical professionals are ‘holier than thou’. Far holier of course than Zebras, Nightingales, Spoonies and the Millions Missing.

But the outward ripple effect of PACE trial for people living with ME is never considered either. It’s one that can create tidal waves, threatening to engulf them.

Public disorder

Outside of the medical profession, the implication from PACE that people can ‘think their pain better’ and ‘exercise to reduce symptoms’ can be catastrophic. Because, when social services get involved and deem that a parent’s or child’s illness is ‘all in their heads’ the results can be devastating, as the ME Association reported.

Please don’t try and tell me this is isolated, because it’s not. I can name two mothers on my estate alone that had social services involved because of chronic illness. Moreover, the ME Association report just deals with people who have ME diagnoses. I dread to think how many undiagnosed cases of ME have been implicated in child protection issues.

This is an issue that’s probably worse in working class and poor communities. Research has shown [pdf, p3] that 60% of child welfare interventions happen in the bottom 20% most deprived communities. How many of these families have mis/undiagnosed illnesses?

This same issue reverberates around other public bodies like the education system and transport. Hands up if you’re living with ME and been told to move from the priority seating on a bus? The notion of ‘invisible illness’ and the prejudice around it has been compounded/played into by PACE trial. When doctors think it’s psychological, you can imagine what the rest of society thinks. Including families.

Family issues

Many people already struggle to explain to family members, friends and their community just what the disease is and how it affects them. To then try and explain that a treatment for a physical disease is talking therapy? It again just compounds the notion that it’s ‘all in a person’s head’. Think yourself better, you pathetic hypochondriacs.

I’d say in my experience, this problem is again worse for working class and poor sick and disabled people. We’re back to the issues of further/higher education and time poverty again.

But in the cosseted world that Sharpe, ‘Sir’ Wessley (knighted for his establishment forelock-tugging contribution to psychology) and the rest of them live in, the socioeconomic intersections of PACE trial have probably never entered their over-educated, under-intelligent heads.

This issue is then compounded by another one.

Liar liar?

The results for a patient of both CBT and GET are highly subjective. How much better does talking about it make you feel? Are the exercises making your pain less? Try as the PACE trial authors might, there is no hard and fast measurements of these.

So, once again we’re back to the ripple effect with people’s family, friends and communities. If people have cancer and it doesn’t work, you can blame the chemotherapy. A worsening for AIDS patients can be put down to their body’s unresponsiveness to anti-viral medication.

But if someone living with ME doesn’t improve from CBT and GET? Who’s to blame? Invariably it’s the patient, because they’re not ‘engaging with the therapy’, or not ‘working hard enough’ on the GET. This is because there’s no other entity involved in both ‘therapies’, except the practitioner and the patient. And the former can’t be wrong, naturally. So – you’re not trying, you worthless scroungers.

Not that this notion would have entered the heads of the arrogant PACE trial authors. Their own self-assured, messiah-like narcissism only orbits one world: their own.

Amateur dramatics

I previously described the media war over PACE trial and professor Michael Sharpe as his “troll drama”. It is a drama. One he and the Science Media Centre (SMC) have scripted. One he and the SMC are directing. And one he is starring in.

For someone who claims he gets “abuse” from patients online, Sharpe is never off his Twitter – often searching out threads where’s he’s been mentioned but where his handle hasn’t been included.

But ultimately, Sharpe, in his privileged, well-heeled world is a disgrace to the medical profession for saying he’s the one being abused. If he can’t handle anger, criticism and concern from patients and their advocates (“activists” as the media circus would call them), then he’s in the wrong job. Make decisions about the lives of millions of people? Don’t do it if you don’t want a backlash if it’s proven your decisions are fundamentally flawed.

It runs deeper than this, though. The arrogant dogmatism of the PACE trial authors, who can’t possibly be questioned by patients, has extended to fellow medical professionals like Dr Emma Reinhold and MPs like Carol Monaghan. Caught in the crossfire for daring to break rank from the establishment narrative.

Lives destroyed. And for what?

Ultimately, though, this is about people. It’s about lives that have been ruined. This is about people effectively left to rot. It’s about abuse, distress, anger and neglect. This is about people who may have had relationships ruined, have self-harmed our possibly even attempted to take their own lives.

But it’s also about a medical profession that in some quarters believe they are god-like. That they should rule over their patients, without question. And that their patients should be grateful and servile for having the privilege of their presence in their lives.

Bollocks to that. PACE trial and its authors are a disgrace to the medical profession, causing misery on an untold number of people’s lives.

If this makes me an ‘abusive troll’, so be it. If the truth hurts the PACE trial authors that much, maybe they should try some CBT and GET. After all, what’s good for the goose…

If you like my work any gifts/donations to keep it going are gratefully accepted below. Thank you.