Dearie, dearie, dearie me

An excellent summing up of the skulduggery of the PACE trial here, the graphics are simply splendid. And not forgetting that its definition of recovery is dodgy as hell, and that it used Oxford criteria (where post-exertional malaise (PEM), the cardinal feature of ME, is not necessary for a diagnosis of 'CFS'), later changed to London criteria. Five million pounds down the drain and no one with my illness is better, but that didn't stop the media wetting its knickers over the results. Who benefits? Psychiatrists with niches to carve and medals to win; colluding health editors with not a jot of curiosity about truth, preferring to have sensationalist headlines.  I prefer this kind of medallist myself: award-winning Professor Warren Tate of University of Otago in New Zealand interviewed a couple of months ago about his quest to find a biomarker for ME. His daughter also suffers from ME. More on his work in biochemistry here.

Worth revisiting this thread on the BMJ from 2011, discussion of criteria.