‘Voices from the Shadows’ shows the devastating effects some patients have suffered following exercise programmes. These treatments of Graded Exercise Therapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, used as the primary treatment for CFS and ME on the basis that patients have become de-conditioned from resting too much, caught in a cycle of boom and bust as a consequence of mistaken ideas about this illness, have become the accepted treatment across the NHS for patients.
David Tuller is academic coordinator of the concurrent masters degree program in public health and journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He has spent the last year or more pursuing an in-depth investigation into a major research project – the UK’s PACE Trial – which received what was a disproportionate amount of money from the MRC in comparison with other research projects for CFS in the UK. The distorted publicity give to the trials results, which misrepresented the illness, impacted very badly on public and health professionals perceptions of patients.
David Tuller’s investigation, ‘Trial By Error’ was published n three instalments on October 21st, 22nd and 23rd 2015 in Virology with links to each instalment at http://www.virology.ws/?s=Trial+by+Error http://www.virology.ws/2015/10/21/trial-by-error-i/ http://www.virology.ws/2015/10/22/trial-by-error-ii/ http://www.virology.ws/2015/10/23/trial-by-error-iii/
He says “Top researchers who have reviewed the study say it is fraught with indefensible methodological problems.” and includes quotes by a number of highly respected scientists –
Dr. Bruce Levin, Columbia University: “To let participants know that interventions have been selected by a government committee ‘based on the best available evidence’ strikes me as the height of clinical trial amateurism.”
Dr. Ronald Davis, Stanford University: “I’m shocked that the Lancet published it…The PACE study has so many flaws and there are so many questions you’d want to ask about it that I don’t understand how it got through any kind of peer review.”
Dr. Arthur Reingold, University of California, Berkeley: “Under the circumstances, an independent review of the trial conducted by experts not involved in the design or conduct of the study would seem to be very much in order.”
Dr. Jonathan Edwards, University College London: “It’s a mass of un-interpretability to me…All the issues with the trial are extremely worrying, making interpretation of the clinical significance of the findings more or less impossible.”
Dr. Leonard Jason, DePaul University: “The PACE authors should have reduced the kind of blatant methodological lapses that can impugn the credibility of the research, such as having overlapping recovery and entry/disability criteria.”