The promising ME research, about which you report (Latest research shows ME may be in the genes, The Herald, May 6) will be aired at a conference this week. Its focus is on the physical cause of this neurological illness (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis), for which there is already an abundance of evidence.
Dr Jonathan Kerr has good reason to believe that a diagnostic test – perhaps a simple blood test – which may suggest appropriate treatment, is only a matter of time.
Last week, a Royal Society of Medicine conference, to which only a selected audience of doctors were invited, focused on fatigue and the psychiatric origins of ME for which there is none.
There is no diagnostic test in sight and the only recommendations are two coping, or management, strategies, one of which, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) has no lasting benefit, without relapse, for people with ME and the other, Graded Exercise Treatment (GET), which makes some patients irrecoverably worse.
ME sufferers are appalled and frustrated, that the psychiatric approach has had £8.5m to establish a network of clinics, which requires millions more each year to maintain, while not a penny piece of public money has been spent on biomedical research and work like Dr Kerr’s has to rely on charity.
By: Dr John H Greensmith, ME Free For All. org, 36a North Street, Downend, Bristol.
Posted by Wessely 