THE Government are to be asked to do more to help ME patients who have spent the last seven years suffering as a result of bad science.
Ever since research into the condition was published by the Lancet medical journal in 2011, people going to their GP and presenting symptoms of ME, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome, have been advised to seek psychiatric help or to run it off.
That’s because the trial in the Lancet said exercise and counselling would lead to a 60 per cent chance of getting better and a 20 per cent chance of recovering outright.
But after campaigners went to court to force researchers to release the raw data, that study, known as the PACE trial, has been discredited.
Re-analysis has suggested that the true figure for recovery was much lower and that exercise can often make ME sufferers much sicker.
Yet, the study, despite its flaws, is still being used to dictate treatment in Scotland, England and Wales.
SNP MP Carol Monaghan is to take the fight to government, with a Westminster Hall debate today.
She says she has constituents living with “terrible pain and suffering” who have, for years, had their physical illness diagnosed as a mental illness.
Monaghan says some of them have faced sanctions because the DWP do not see the illness as physical.
“I consider this debate to be a starting point rather than an end point”, she said.
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