NICE guideline review: A list of appointees to the ME/CFS Guideline Committee has now been published

Robert 1973 said:
Do lay members have the same voting rights as other committee members?
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The answer to my question seems to be yes.

From Developing NICE guidelines: the manual
3.1 Introduction
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All committee members, including practitioner, provider, commissioner and lay members, have equal status, acknowledging the importance of the expertise and experience that each member brings to the committee.

https://www.nice.org.uk/3.1 Introduction/pmg20/chapter/decision-making-committees
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Membership
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7. Committee members will be drawn from the NHS, local government, the academic community and other areas, as appropriate, as agreed by the developer and NICE staff with responsibility for guideline quality assurance. They will include practitioners, commissioners and providers, people using services, their family members and carers, and advocates.

8. The committee will have a minimum of 7 voting members with additional members agreed on a topic-by-topic basis according to need. Each committee will have a chair. Topic-specific committees may have a topic adviser, and will include professional and practitioner members, and lay members. Standing committees will have core members and topic expert members. All committee members are selected for their expertise and not as representatives of their organisations.

9. Co-opted members may be included as additional members of a committee for 1 or more specific meetings. Co-opted members are part of the committee, join in discussion and contribute to formulating the recommendations. However, they are not full members, do not have voting rights and do not count towards the quorum.

10. Expert witnesses may be invited to attend and advise the committee on specific topics and can be drawn from a wide range of areas as appropriate. They are invited to present their evidence in the form of expert testimony and are asked to provide a written paper, or to agree a summary of their evidence recorded by the developer. They also help the committee to consider and interpret the evidence, but they are not members of the committee so they should not be involved in the final decisions or influence the wording of the recommendations. Expert witnesses have no voting rights and do not count towards the quorum.

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Voting

32. The decisions of the committee will normally be arrived at by a consensus of committee members present. Voting will only be used for decision-making in exceptional circumstances. Before a decision to move to a vote is made, the chair will, in all cases, consider whether continuing the discussion at a subsequent meeting is likely to lead to consensus.

33. Voting will be anonymous and decisions determined by a simple majority of non-conflicted committee members present at a quorate meeting.

34. The chair of the committee will be included in the vote, and in the event of there being an equality of votes the chair will have a second, casting vote.

35. Only committee members present at the meeting will be eligible to vote. There will be no proxy voting.

36. Co-opted members, expert witnesses, developer staff, NICE staff and observers will not be eligible to vote.


https://www.nice.org.uk/process/pmg...mittee-terms-of-reference-and-standing-orders
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MSEsperanza said:
Edit: re: Gabrielle Murphy among the signatories of an open letter protesting against the article about the said protest, IoS letters, emails & online postings (2 December 2012):


https://www.independent.co.uk/voice...-online-postings-2-december-2012-8373777.html
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This list provides us with the names of everyone who should be barred from having anything to do with ME patients. They all seem pretty hardline BPS to me so interesting that Holgate was among them. He should really consider his position. Bearing in mind I only started getting educated about ME in the past couple of years interesting how he has repositioned himself as a fence sitter. I think he needs to either make some big apologies for being on the wrong side or shuffle off the scene.
 
Russell Fleming said:
Dr Shepherd has accepted the appointment as co-opted member of the guideline committee.
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Does this allow him to vote?

Edit:
I should read first before asking.
Dr Shepherd was invited to be a full member of the Guideline committee but because that meant he would have to stop his public statements and advice for the MEA, he decided instead to be a co-opted member which means he will be involved in discussions but not able to vote.
 
Trish said:
Does this allow him to vote?
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No. I have a lot of mixed about this so I’m just putting up various thoughts, not opinion. There obviously has been a lot of behind the scenes stuff and still is if Dr Shepherd is making personal recommendations. I’m assuming there will be no comment from mea on the other members now.
It might be very good to do what Dr s has done, it might be considered great they are allowing expert charity involvement or it might make no difference if he can’t vote or it might be an establishment way of controlling the response of a major, historically NICE critical charity. With him and Dr Weir there is more” balance” but it is right to have the others on the panel at all with the inevitable compromise and continuation of a broad, diverse approach. Ultimately are we to view the whole process much more positively now than with the original list put up and just let them get on with the next phase as suggested
There’s also the point of Dr S and Dr W can be members after all, I can’t see why Dr Worthley, Speight or chaudhuri (neurologist) couldn’t.
 
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I respect Dr. Shepherds decision and understand it was a difficult dilemma, but I think I would have preferred him to become a full member of the committee. We need the votes.

Edit: Stewarts insightful remarks made me change my mind (see posts below).

Edit: Charles Shepherds own comments made me doubt my opinion again (see later posts). Apologies for the confusion.
 
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Some handy NICE definitions included at the end of the MEA statement

Co-Opted Members
Co-opted members may be included as additional members of a committee for 1 or more specific meetings. Co-opted members are part of the committee, join in discussion and contribute to formulating the recommendations. However, they are not full members, do not have voting rights and do not count towards the quorum.
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Expert Witnesses
Expert witnesses may be invited to attend and advise the committee on specific topics and can be drawn from a wide range of areas as appropriate. They are invited to present their evidence in the form of expert testimony and are asked to provide a written paper, or to agree a summary of their evidence recorded by the developer. They also help the committee to consider and interpret the evidence, but they are not members of the committee, so they should not be involved in the final decisions or influence the wording of the recommendations. Expert witnesses have no voting rights and do not count towards the quorum.
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I am very pleased to be working alongside colleagues that will now include committee members Tony Crouch, Luis Nacul, William Weir, expert witnesses Jonathan Edwards and Greg Crowhurst, and the important lay members.
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Is this the first 'official' confirmation of Jo's involvement?
 
Michiel Tack said:
I respect Dr. Shepherds decision and understand it was a difficult dilemma, but I think I would have preferred him to become a full member of the committee. We need the votes.
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I agree with you - but from Dr Shepherd's statement it appears that he felt that as a full member he might still need to recuse himself from some of the key discussions and votes. So even as a full member he might not have been able to influence the outcome in some of the most important areas.

My question is this - if Charles is a co-opted member, does that mean there's another 'Physician with an interest in ME/CFS' still to be announced as a full member of the committee?
 
Stewart said:
My question is this - if Charles is a co-opted member, does that mean there's another 'Physician with an interest in ME/CFS' still to be announced as a full member of the committee?
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I think this refers to William Weir. Shepherds dilemma was probably the reason why NICE was not sure if there were going to be 1 or 2 extra Physicians with an interest in ME/CFS
 
Stewart said:
rom Dr Shepherd's statement it appears that he felt that as a full member he might still need to recuse himself from some of the key discussions and votes. So even as a full member he might not have been able to influence the outcome in some of the most important areas.
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Good point. He writes: "as a full committee member, I might also have to remove myself from discussions and decisions in areas where I obviously have a very strong opinion." I think this indicates he would have no voting rights regarding GET/CBT, because he allready published strong opinions about this.

Not 100% sure about it, but if this is indeed the case, then it would be good news. It could indicate that other members of the committee such as Murphy will also have no voting rights on these matters.

In that case, Shepherd probably made the right decision.

Edit: I think I might have made a mistake here, see later posts
 
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Michiel Tack said:
I respect Dr. Shepherds decision and understand it was a difficult dilemma, but I think I would have preferred him to become a full member of the committee. We need the votes.
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Absolutely, he should have taken the vote in my view, given what we are up against.
 
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