PACE Trial - a strong smell of Fish

The Guardian newspaper headlines:
"Study finds therapy and exercise best for ME

Chronic fatigue syndrome study finds more people recover if they are helped to try to do more than they think they can"  (see article, click here)

I wonder how many ME sufferers will be sent this article - and other like it, such as the Sky News report - by friends and relatives who hope that at long last a cure has been found for a serious and debilitating chronic illness.

The thing is that the people who were involved in the trial only had to have "fatigue" as a qualifying symptom.  There are dozens, if not hundreds of reasons to have "fatigue" that have nothing to do with ME, eg depression, kidney failure, heart disease, high blood pressure, respiratory illnesses, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, anaemia and a host of others.  So if the research subjects were just made part of the project simply on the basis of "fatigue" then its ludicrous to imagine that the research results can be applied to the neurological condition of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis as defined by Dr Melvin Ramsay or the Canadian guidelines or criteria.


Put it this way.  There are dozens of causes of abdominal pain.  Lets list a few:

• bladder infection/cystitis
• kidney stones
• gall stones
• appendicitis
• typhoid fever
• tonsillitis (tummy ache in kids with tonsillitis is very common)
• childbirth
• period pain
• food poisoning
• peritoneal abscess
• hepatitis
• ectopic pregnancy
• irritable bowel syndrome
• colitis
• Crohns disease 

The patients would all complain of abdominal pain, but not even the most junior and ignorant medical student would suggest that they all be treated the same way. How would surgery to remove a gall bladder help the pain of a woman in labour?

This is one of the reasons why the findings of the PACE Trial has been rejected by so many people, both experienced clinicians as well as patients.  See what Professor Malcolm Hooper has to say about the trial HERE. As a respected scientist of good standing, he explains succintly why these results are biased, unscientific and crawling with vested interests.