By Donna Sumner

From Winter 2016/7 Forum

A patient from Australia, Alem Matthees, brought the PACE trial to court in England and a judge ruled in favor of his plea to comply to a patient’s Freedom of Information Request (FOI). The judge ruled in his favor that the authors of the PACE trial, that claims graded exercise (GET) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) are helpful to those with CFIDS/ME. The authors of that study complained of huge patient harassment as an excuse but, when under crossexamination, the violent harassment was one heckler at a lecture!

Indeed, the FOI data showed that the authors, which the NCF has always referred to as “psychobabblers”, massively inflated their resulting data to make GET and CBT seem like therapies that helped patients improve. In fact, their claim of 69% recovery was barely any at all when compared to the controls. There were many other scientific researchers who helped to expose and disparage the PACE trial.

That didn’t stop Esther Crawley, M.D., Ph.D. from embarking on a new trial and giving the press in England erroneous material to print in their paper. That misinformation was soundly and publicly dismissed by the Countess of Mar who gave the paper statistics that showed how the newspaper was completely duped and, in turn, duped their readers. All the larger science, especially from the United States, was completely ignored including all the fully replicated science funded by the National CFIDS Foundation such as the slowly depleted portion of the immune system called Stat-1 as well as the cause found to be a toxin that used the sodium channel in the body proven by Dr. Yoshitsugi Hokama. Of course, our own government feigns ignorance of all that fully replicated and proven science as well. Crawley wanted to begin the FITNET study using CBT on children.

Studies have already proven that CBT on children could actually make them worse. But Crawley claims it was her research that was a success in Norway in 2012. O.K., let’s look at that trial. She blames the mother of one failure in that trial because the child who kept worsening made her mother concerned. Well, if a mother didn’t feel some anxiety watching her child with CFIDS/ME worsen, who would consider her a good mother? Well, Crawley would. She published a study a few years ago that associated a mother’s depression with her child getting CFIDS/ME. It was entitled “Maternal and Childhood Psychological Factors Predict Chronic Disabling Fatigue At Age 13” (Journal of Adolescent Health). Family therapy was her suggestion. Well, as a psychiatrist, what else would she suggest? She feels it legitimate to rediagnose a child with CFIDS/ME that doesn’t respond to her therapy as having a psychosomatic disorder! She, along with all her coauthors, actually harm children.

If Crawley is at all human, shouldn’t she be concerned about the harm so many children have exhibited via CBT and GET? In my opinion, before she gets a chance to worsen any one child, Crawley should be examined to see is she, herself, is the one with a pscho-somatic disorder. She certainly is what the NCF would term a psychobabbler and her dangerousness continues to this day.