Indeed,
The BMJ, and the many other titles under the BMJ publishing umbrella, have for decades provided opportunities for the GET/CBT zealots to air their theories about deconditioning and problematic illness beliefs as causal factors for ME/CFS—theories now extended to Long Covid. A 1989 letter written by Dr Melvin Ramsey, an early ME researcher, reveals the historical nature of this prejudicial and biased approach.
Dr. Ramsey investigated the 1950s disease outbreak at London’s Royal Free Hospital, the event that subsequently gave rise to the name “myalgic encephalomyelitis.” In 2021, an invaluable Twitter (now X) account,
Royal Free 1955, which has released an impressive archive of relevant documents,
posted Dr. Ramsey’s letter. In the letter, addressed to someone named Edith, Dr. Ramsey discussed the challenges he was confronting in trying to publish ME-related research. Here’s the key section:
“For many months we have been in difficulty by the influence exerted by a psychiatrist, Dr. Simon Wessly [sic] who has secured for himself the position of referee to the BMJ whose Assistant Editor has been strongly anti-ME and we cannot get anything published in British medical journals in our favor. Simon Wessly cuts right across my fundamental tenet of “rest” for chronic M.E. cases and tries to get them admitted to Psychiatric Units where they are immediately put on vigorous exercise.”
