For better or worse, I've written. Despite misgivings about the 250,000 and 25% figures, I've used these for concreteness. If anyone wants to use this or improve on it for contacting your own MP, be my guest.
"I am writing to ask whether you would please sign EDM 1247, in support of ME Awareness Week.
https://www.parliament.uk/edm/2017-19/1247
As your constituent, and a ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome) patient of nine years and counting, this issue is extremely important to me, as it is to many others. ME/CFS affects circa 250,000 people in the UK. With 650 constituencies in the UK, this gives a mean of 385 ME patients per constituency (not factoring constituency size or variance in population density). It is estimated that twenty-five per cent of sufferers are severe, being house or bed-bound, often for years. I was bed-bound with severe ME for five years, and remain significantly unwell and substantially functionally impaired. The sickest may require tube-feeding, subsist in dark rooms as they cannot tolerate light, require significant care for every aspect of their much reduced circumstances, and may lack the strength even to communicate verbally.
Biomedical research into ME has historically been and continues to be woefully underfunded, despite unequivocal abnormalities evidencing an organic medical condition. ME is frequently regarded as a psychiatric disorder within the medical profession, with some healthcare professionals of the position that they simply don't believe in it. This despite recent research findings that participants with ME/CFS were measurably more disabled than participants with Multiple Sclerosis (
https://doi.org/10.1007/s41669-018-0071-6 ). Such characterisation of ME/CFS leads to stigmatisation of patients, social-distancing, depreciation of illness-severity, and patient blaming.
The current NICE Guideline on ME (CG.53) recommends cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and graded exercise therapy (GET) for ME patients. One of the cardinal symptoms of ME is exercise intolerance; over-doing causes worsening of symptoms and may cause a complete relapse in condition. This makes blanket recommendation of these treatments for ME/CFS patients wholly inappropriate and potentially extremely harmful. The £5m PACE Trial (
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60096-2 ) - the keystone research in the evidence base for CBT and GET for ME - is the subject of a number of substantive methodological criticisms, and a recent reanalysis paper of the PACE Trial (
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-018-0218-3 ) showed GET and CBT to have very limited benefit compared with the control group, and that these small differences may be accounted for by the absence of blinding, subjective outcome measures and consequent subject self-reporting bias. The CDC in the US has withdrawn CBT and GET as recommended treatments for people with ME from its website, and NICE will be completely revising the ME/CFS Guideline, October 2020 currently being the scheduled date of publication.
This EDM may help to generate greater governmental awareness of the issues that people with ME face, of its prevalence, and of the need for greater public awareness and understanding of ME. I would, therefore, be very grateful if you would support EDM 1247.
Finally, I have included some links in the event you would like to look at the issues a little more deeply:
1. HoC PACE Trial debate, Westminster Hall, 20.02.18
https://goo.gl/bJwtTV
2. 'TRIAL BY ERROR: The Troubling Case of the PACE Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Study' pt 1/3 David Tuller DrPh 21.10.15
http://www.virology.ws/2015/10/21/trial-by-error-i/
3. Article on illness and death of ME patient Merryn Crofts: Manchester Evening News 01.04.18
https://goo.gl/H5Xto6
4. BBC Newsbeat documentary 08. 05.18
https://youtu.be/ XLPCuEdqIWY
[Remove the space in the middle of the link for it to work properly]
Thank you for taking the time to read about this matter and in anticipation of your kind assistance."