Dr Gabrielle Murphy - UK BPS ME/CFS doctor

Taken from a blog originally from 2011 but the comments go on to 2018;

other comments:

in the interest of being equipoise, a more positive comment (although Dr Murphy knew that the patient was a medical student):

full blog here:
http://itsallaboutmememeandme.blogspot.com/2011/09/hospital-appointment.html

eta: another NICE guideline committee member

eta2: (note also BACME member, and one of the medical advisers [another one is Esther Crawley] for Sussex and Kent ME/CFS Society [aka measussex])

eta3: she was the Chair of BACME

 

Royal Free Fatigue service:

https://www.royalfree.nhs.uk/servic...e-service/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-treatment/

eta: good job they didn't take this approach with the original
'Royal Free outbreak' .... they clearly haven't learned from their own history.

 

There is no biological marker for this disease which produces physical distress, overlaps depression (particularly when low thresholds for that diagnosis are set), and is associated with occupational handicap. However, doctors have a range of skills to help patients with biological, psychological, and social problems. These can be used to help patients with CFS depending on individual need. It is unnecessary and indeed unproductive to force patients into unsuitable diagnostic categories as a condition for treatment. It may be more productive at present to define problems with patients and help to plan problem-solving measures with them.

Read together with the above comments about Murphy, this quotation from a 1991 paper shows just how Wessely and co have boxed in their colleagues with CBT and GET, and the loss of flexibility and professional judgment that has resulted.

 

Or put another way:

Evidence shows that when a therapy fails to produce results, patients demonstrate a reduced commitment to continuing with therapy.

Wonder why that would be? How can they honestly tell the difference?

 

How many cancer patients continue with chemotherapy that isn't working? As usual blame the patient, not the therapy.

 

This isn't what the post-war Labour government intended for the National Health Service. The NHS structure as presently constituted provides zero incentive to help patients, let alone make them well. It provides every incentive to get along within a rigid, stagnant bureaucracy. Bureaucracies in general are vulnerable to being led by persons lacking in empathy (this has been reported in serious psychological research.) Ergo the NHS structure enforces lack of empathy, in particular to any thing or person that is non-conforming. So this unkind, narrow-minded and incurious woman is a well-paid big cheese. And you only get one option for care! So if a doctor makes an error on the first go round you are doomed......This is unethical as well as illogical. I've never before heard of doctors so lacking in interest of getting people well.

 

May we know the bibliographical reference for the 1991 paper please?

 

Sorry. I expired before making my point. A constitutional failing. And my intended epitaph.

Journal of Infection (199I) 23, 263-269

Biopsychosocial aspects of chronic fatigue syndrome (myalgic encephalomyelitis)

J. D. I. Yeomans* and S. P. Conwayt * Department of Psychiatry, Roundhay Wing, St James's University Hospital, Beckett St, Leeds LS9 7 TF and t Department of Infectious Diseases, Seacroft Hospital, York Road, Leeds LSI4 6UH, U.K.

https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/0163-4453(91)92864-2

 

Interesting. They talk of 15 patients in the study, but then admit only 60% of them met the Holmes et al definition of CFS. So that was 9 patients then. Oh but all met the CFS definition from Sharpe et al.

 

In case anyone watching it missed it, halfway through, before going into the explanation of 'how it all works' (leading to chronic fatigue) her preferred model is 'psychoneuroimmunology', she says
"What we believe in the psychoneuroimmunological model is............"

 

no mention of her involvement in the PACE Trial - amazing

 

Given that's she's chair of the BACME and running the London Fatigue Clinic, she's also basically got 2 stakeholders to feed back as too - so her views are also in the 10 year surveillance report and other stakeholder consultations

According to her Esther Crawley's FITNET-NHS has something to do with ME & CFS. Despite using the Oxford criteria. Alarmingly Esther's still recruiting kids for GET.

 

More on 'Psyhoneuroimmunology' can be found on pages 167 - 172 of this book https://cdchester.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/SUSANA1.pdf
The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology Health & Medicine.

the book has a chapter on CFS & is discussed in this thread https://www.s4me.info/threads/cambr...-chapter-on-cfs-from-chalder-and-cairns.7582/

I'd be most interested to get your take on the chapter on PNI @Jonathan Edwards , if & when you have time, or indeed any of our other immunology literate members... I wonder how accurate it is, how reliable the studies quoted are etc.

 

GM was at our table for the Scope meeting and said that she was no longer chair. I think that she stopped/resigned whatever after their March conference.

 

The minutes of the General Meeting on 15.3.18 still have her as Chair. (thanks to @Sly Saint for downloading these). I have seen a name that I did not recognise referred to as the new Chair subsequently. When I find it I'll post it!

 

Gabrielle Murphy wrote the ME Awareness post on May as Chair. If she has quit then I'd say it's purely for the NICE guidelines and does nothing to convince me that she is any less connected than before.

Esther Crawley was chair when appointed to the last guidelines panel.

 

@Sly Saint can you confirm Mike Beadsworth is on the Executive of the BACME too?
I'm sure I saw that recently. I know he was at the AGM.

I don't know what other BACME roles he holds but I noticed they have a Liverpool & Mersey group, and he was "local host" at the Changing Times conference in Liverpool.

 

He was but I have been unable to find out who exactly are on the current executive (since their last agm).

It said in the minutes "The executive officers are proposing a change to the structure of the BACME Executive. Currently there are up to 26 members of the executive."

They seem to be a very secretive bunch.

 

It is drivel. There is no need to implicate 'psychological' causation in any major immune response, whether beneficial or deleterious. There may be slight shifts of this and that but this chapter is full of complete bullshit about Th1 and Th2 responses. The authors are perhaps not aware that this sort of paradigm faded out twenty years ago and never had any evidence base anyway.

This is pseudoscience. The sad thing is that so much that passes for received wisdom these days is this rubbish.

I could not here clearly what Murphy was saying on the video on the other thread. I gave up when she started taking nonsense about Descartes. I have recently published a chapter on Descartes's contribution to our understanding of the place of mind in physics. It is a pity that the BPS people do not take the trouble to find out the most basic of things they waffle about.