XMRV Professors: No Contamination found in PACE Trial

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"Voluntary" work for insurance companies! How public spirited!!!!!

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meassociation

16 February 2011

Professor Stephen Holgate, Chair of Medical Research Council (MRC) Expert Group on M.E.

Professor Holgate gave a brief history of M.E. research, and explained that scientific peer reviews had tended in the past to involve mainly those with a background in neuroscience. This had led to research that did not reflect the views of those who believed that the condition has an organic cause

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J Couper Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 2000

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First, a report from the Chief Medical Adviser’s Expert Group was published commenting on diagnostic and prognostic issues so as to be able to give ‘meaningful advice on social security benefits’

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The Australian draft document suggests that a CFS case of greater than 5 years of disability, during which the person is incapable of gainful employment, should be regarded as ‘permanent disability’ for medicolegal purposes.

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As we have seen, the very inception of the UK consensus report arose in large part from a wish to challenge the notion that such pronouncements can yet be made in relation to a disease concept where so much remains uncertain.

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In contrast to the eight psychiatrists on the sixteen-member UK working group, the Australian group ought to be less vulnerable to criticism that it is ‘top-heavy with psychiatric experts’

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Further studies demonstrated the importance of patients’ illness attributions in predicting clinical outcomes after viral infections and, controversially, demonstrated that membership of a CFS/ME selfhelp group could be associated with a poorer clinical outcome.

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Encouraged by these and other insights from contemporary research, UK psychiatrists in the mid-1990s began to take up more opportunities to comment in the electronic media and in the press on the potential benefits of psychologically informed management strategies for CFS

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Psychiatrists were emboldened to comment further in the media on the CFS/ME issue in the role of leaders in research and clinical management

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Long-standing prejudices against people who have psychiatric illnesses and/or are psychologically troubled can be expressed in subtle and indirect ways. Aspects of the CFS debate in the UK could be seen as being a socially acceptable outlet for this prejudice.

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Price JR, Couper J. Cognitive behaviour therapy for adults with chronic fatigue syndrome (Cochrane Review). In: The Cochrane Library, Issue 2. Oxford: Update Software, 2000.