Support for PACE Trial petition surges to over 10,000 signatures | 12 November 2015

November 14, 2015


A petition that's touching many a raw nerve about claims made in the PACE Trial that cognitive behaviour therapy and graded exercise are effective treatments for ME/CFS has gathered well over 10,000 signatures since it was published about a fortnight ago.

The petition – launched by the #MEAction advocacy group founded by Jennifer Brea – calls on two journals, the Lancet and Psychological Medicine, to retract contentious claims about recovery and to give independent researchers access to the anonymised raw data for the purpose of verification.

#MEAction says the published results from the £5m trial – the biggest of its type in the world – have hugely influenced medical practice and media attitudes towards the illness round the globe and quotes Jonathan Edwards, Emeritus Professor of Connective Tissue Medicine at University College London, who said:

“All the issues with the trial are extremely worrying, making interpretation of the clinical significance of the findings more or less impossible”.

One of our press releases, We challenge the PACE Trial follow-up report in today's Lancet Psychiatry | 28 October 2015, is also cited in the #MEAction statement.


THE PETITION IS AVAILABLE TO SIGN HERE.


3 thoughts on “Support for PACE Trial petition surges to over 10,000 signatures | 12 November 2015”

  1. Thanks to all who have signed this petition and MEAction. We still need more signatures if we want to make it absolutely clear, to those who think these therapies are good for ME/CFS, that they definitely are not!
    Not a small minority of antagonists that want an end to the PACE Trial and it’s consequences then?!!

  2. I signed today.
    Here is the original comment I hoped to post on the Petition site:

    “Patients, the public and doctors need to have faith in the high ethical standards of medical research, scientists & the peer review process. Deployment of smoke, mirrors, cheap parlour tricks and semantic tactics have no place in credible trials or their publicity, yet a small but vocal group of adherents to a rigorous brand of mental orthodoxy, at whatever cost, has apparently managed to derail the integrity of the scientific process in the field of ME research. They have failed to impress the ME patient community for decades. Its now a great relief to see credible and alert mainstream scientists finally stepping up to join patients in this challenge.”

    However, due to the 500 character restriction, I posted an abbreviated version:

    “Patients, the public & doctors need to have faith in the high ethical standards of medical research, scientists & the peer review process. Deployment of smoke, mirrors, cheap parlour tricks & semantics have no place in this. The dogma of mental orthodoxy underlying this trial has failed to impress the ME patient community for decades. Its great to see credible & alert scientists now joining patients in a renewed call for transparency.”

  3. Thank you Jackie.

    Malcolm Hooper’s report shows a far greater degree of the serious nature of this struggle.

    I hope the above Doctors are part of the movement to help us, not only to raise awareness about ME, but to overturn the decisions made on flawed evidence, provided by the psychiatrists involved in the PACE Trial.

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