The “scandal” of the PACE trial for CFS/ME, BLB Solicitors

A short piece by a firm of personal injury solicitors presumably seeing the possibility of legal action where patients have been harmed:

https://www.blbchronicpain.co.uk/news/scandal-pace-trial-cfs/

 

One of the solicitors tweeted a link to their article to Michael Sharpe,
https://twitter.com/user/status/989066843913707520

 

omg, is it christmas already?

also, i sincerely hope someone is archiving all those tweets.

 

Wonder if Michael Sharpe will threaten the solicitors with libel?

 

Doing a little happy dance. (Okay, only in my head.)

 

Generally, it's not the person whose behaviour is being judged that gets to decide whether they're a part of a scandal or not.

It's like Wessely's “OK folks, nothing to see here, move along please.”

Who do they think they're fooling?

 

*I understand that Sharpe (& Wessely) have set up Google alerts relating to their work, which is maybe why they are quick to respond on subjects like PACE and the colourful language they have used about patients in the past.

*PS Narcissistic personality disorder on Wikipedia

 

Sharpe is re-iterating that there is no scandal, while the solicitors are being pointed to @dave30th's posts on Virology blog,
https://twitter.com/user/status/989105843667955714

https://twitter.com/user/status/989133010393092096

https://twitter.com/user/status/989153150614626304

https://twitter.com/user/status/989183650959835137

 

Now we are talking real consequences

 

They also have another article on their site called "Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and others are essentially one and the same condition" which has the following section :

"Psychological history

Psychological issues are accepted as an important factor in these conditions and there is a clear overlap with psychiatric ‘somatisation disorders’. In particular there is an association with depression, anxiety and adverse early life events.

Whilst there is a wide spectrum, doctors believe that in a ‘typical’ case there will be a history of early life stressors (bereavement, bullying, mental, physical or sexual abuse); onset of depression or anxiety during adolescence (when it appears that the brain is becoming hard-wired) and during adolescence and early adult life, the sufferer repeatedly reports unexplained medical symptoms that become intrusive."

They don't seem quite as understanding in this one.

 

not getting anywhere small claims solicitors fishing for clients to rip of does not equate to a realistic chance of the pace trial fraudsters ever seeing the inside of a courtroom as defendants .considering the extensive support in their narrative from the british establishment who for all we know had their fingers very deep in this particular pie. considering they used these results to justify their attacks on the chronically sick not just people suffering from m e .

 

to me, individual lawsuits are not appropriately real consequences.

prison terms would be one example of real consequences. alongside real consequences, massive retractions and genuinely truth-seeking official and unofficial investigations are needed. [not to mention science, services, and many more things.]

 

have you seen how long it takes in England just to get a full inquiry started. by the time government accepted the need for such an inquiry many of those responsible would be dead or able to claim no memory of such events due to old age . private legal action is only slightly quicker when the culprits have access to the best lawyers undoubtedly paid for by the taxpayer. our legal system is very perverse when it comes to financial aid.

 

I don't think it's productive to unnecessarily diagnose people with personality disorders. You know this forum is public?

 

on a forum for cdc employees, we were once castigated by a bigot for setting up google alerts. i'm more inclined to say that google alerts [and competitors] are useful tools for activism [not merely for persecution] and they are not an indicator of deviance.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/989493537384345600

 

Proof it's the BPS mob driving researchers out of the field (or this country at least) and not patients.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/986501447469674496

 

I've, increasingly, been of the opinion that a legal route has, in some way, to be sought here.

I watch the reactions of the BPS crowd and I sense, at the minimum, a touch of backtracking on the part of some of them.