Would any doctor continue to prescribe a drug which they had been told would benefit 20 per cent of patients with a specific illness, once the truth was revealed to be around 7 per cent, only one percent better than no treatment at all? You’d have to hope not and that concerned and angry doctors would then shout loudly that they had been lied to and that patients had endured years of pointless treatment.
Something like this has just been discovered about the official treatment for a condition that affects an estimated 150,000 people in the UK. Many are bedridden or on disability allowance and refusing to follow this NICE-approved treatment, can lead to a withdrawal of benefits.
The condition is Myalgic Encephalitis (ME) or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and the discovery that exercise plus psychotherapy are effectively useless was the result of a remarkable and very unexpected legal victory last month. It’s potentially a grave embarrassment for several senior psychiatrists and the Lancet, a respected medical journal.
Doctors and patients have long disagreed about the causes and treatment for ME/CFS. The official position is that the cause is unknown but that there is a strong psychological component to the disorder and that the best treatment at the moment is a form of psychotherapy called CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) along with ‘graded exercise’ – doing a bit more every day.
