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1. Mobilising ME/CFS Charities To Smash Flawed PACE Trial Results

Professor Simon Wessely, psychiatrist:
"What the patient doesn't know won't hurt."
UNUM Insurance, Chief Medical Officer's Report 2007
This document is a discussion of the outcome of the PACE trials which coincide with a shake-up of the UK state benefit systems. The latter involves a move towards a 'comply or be sanctioned' culture. Strategies for differentiating yourself from the PACE trial patients and for holding on to state benefits are discussed. Key to success is having the strong financial support from ME/CFS charities to fund individual biomedical testing for patients. The flaws and weaknesses of the biopsychosocial model and the increasingly nebulous definitions that identify CFS patients as having only 'subjective fatigue', psychological in origin, can be exposed with thorough biomedical testing. Start lobbying your charities to pay for it now or face being characterised as having a Functional Somatic Syndrome and your resources cut off indefinitely. How PACE was allowed to come to fruition in this manner is a travesty. Patients have fought for over 50 years to get proper reco gnition for their illness, and several thousand research papers elucidating many of the biomedical factors behind their symptoms have been published. So why were they not taken seriously, and who failed to fight their corner? Could it be the ME/CFS charities who insisted that patients did not need any more than a set of standard blood tests (in line with Wessely School dogma); who seem content to broaden the definition of ME/CFS to include patients with no evidence of inflammation of the brain or spinal cord? The same charities who did not give their wholehearted support to the Canadian Criteria; which, while not perfect, at least recognised the neurological and other biomedical factors central to ME/CFS. And even now, what are the charities really doing about the mess that is the PACE trial publication? Very little seems to be the answer, and for that reason patients must now look to themselves, and each other to limit the damage.
Lara, Health Advocate
Related Links:
* The PACE Report - The MRC/PACE Trial Scandal
Jane Bryant, The One Click Group

2. Parents Of Baby Girl Swine Flu Vaccine Victim Suing State Government

LOVING FAMILY: Mick and Kirsten Button with daughter Saba and son Cooper
The parents of a baby girl who was a victim of last year's flu vaccine debacle are suing the State Government in a potential multimillion-dollar damages claim. Mick and Kirsten Button's daughter, Saba, suffered global brain injury plus kidney, liver and bone marrow failure after prolonged seizures following her vaccination shot. She may never walk or talk. Legal experts believe a payout of more than $10 million is not out of the question. The Sunday Times understands a writ will be served in the District Court this month. The Buttons have engaged medical litigation specialist Julian Johnson, and any compensation would help pay for what happened to Saba as well as provide access to the best available treatment and care for the future. Before Saba had her shot there had been more than 100 "adverse reaction'' presentations at PMH as well as dozens of troubling reports around the state. But this information wasn't passed on to the general public until a fter Saba was in the intensive-care unit.
Billy Rule, Perth Now
Related Links:
* Kids harmed by flu jab must be compensated, says WA Opposition
Perth Now

3. Doctors Must Return GlaxoSmithKline Swine Flu Vaccines Causing Narcolepsy

The Heath Service Executive (HSE) will remove all stocks of the swine flu vaccine Pandemrix from GPs' surgeries, the Sunday Independent has learned. The vaccine has been linked to the disabling sleep disorder, narcolepsy. Last week, this newspaper revealed that eight people who received the swine flu vaccine in Ireland have developed the devastating disorder, with most of the cases involving teenagers and young adults. Now, the HSE has taken the decision to visit GP surgeries around the country and collect the vaccine made by pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. In additional information supplied to family doctors, the HSE describes narcolepsy as "a disabling chronic neurological disorder characterised by recurrent episodes of excessive daytime sleepiness." However, it also noted that narcolepsy is often accompanied by a range of other frightening symptoms including cataplexy -- a sudden loss of muscle tone that is often confused with epilepsy and sometimes leads to a total collapse of the patient. Other symptoms that can develop gradually include sleep paralysis, and hypnagogic hallucinations -- extremely vivid hallucinations that occur at the boundary between sleeping and waking.
Jerome Reilly, Independent.ie

4. Swine Flu Vaccine Causes Boy To Lose Control Of His Body

Altered: After having the Pandemrix vaccine, Joshua
changed from being a happy, energetic child to a
depressed, angry child with narcolepsy
He used to love nothing more than a giggle with his friends. His mother Caroline believes he has contracted narcolepsy with cataplexy after having a swine flu vaccination. It is the first case of its kind to be made public. The European Medicines Agency is now investigating whether the swine flu jab could be responsible for Joshua’s condition, as well as five other cases in the UK. The probe began after a rise in cases of narcolepsy in children given Pandemrix, which is produced by GlaxoSmithKline, in Finland and Sweden. Last month experts in Finland discovered that children who had the jab were nine times more likely to become narcoleptic than those who did not.
Lydia Warren, Daily Mail

5. Vaccines and autism: a new scientific review

For all those who've declared the autism-vaccine debate over - a new scientific review begs to differ. It considers a host of peer-reviewed, published theories that show possible connections between vaccines and autism. The article in the Journal of Immunotoxicology is entitled "Theoretical aspects of autism: Causes--A review." The author is Helen Ratajczak, surprisingly herself a former senior scientist at a pharmaceutical firm. Ratajczak did what nobody else apparently has bothered to do: she reviewed the body of published science since autism was first described in 1943. Not just one theory suggested by research such as the role of MMR shots, or the mercury preservative thimerosal; but all of them. Ratajczak's article states, in part, that "Documented causes of autism include genetic mutations and/or deletions, viral infections, and encephalitis [brain damage] following vaccination. Therefore, autism is the result of ge netic defects and/or inflammation of the brain." University of Pennsylvania's Dr. Brian Strom, who has served on Institute of Medicine panels advising the government on vaccine safety says the prevailing medical opinion is that vaccines are scientifically linked to encephalopathy (brain damage).
Sharyl Attkisson, CBS Evening News
Related Links:
* Theoretical aspects of autism: Causes—A review
Helen V. Ratajczak, Journal of Immunotoxicology, 2011; 8(1): 68–79

6. America's Children Under Stress: Kindergartner Suspended for Crying

America's children are being victimized by public servants who abuse their authority: children's physical and emotional health is under stress. Published is a press release by the Rutherford Institute about a kindergartner who was suspended by Virginia school officials for crying in class. We reported that a Detroit mother was thrown in jail for exercising her parental judgment about her daughter's best interest. Instead of blindly following the instructions of Detroit child protective agents who threatened her with loss of custody unless she gives her daughter the antipsychotic, Risperdal, Maryanne Godboldo was protecting her daughter's health by weaning her off a very dangerous antipsychotic drug. Press reports did not mention Risperdal's list of multiple, harmful severe adverse effects that have been documented in clinical trials and post-marketing reports to the FDA. Children are particularly at risk. What do these cases reveal about the lack of judg ment by those we put in positions of authority over America's children?
Vera Hassner Sharav, AHRP

7. Hundreds Donate Thousands For Mom's Defense Fund (Vaccines, Risperdal)

Maryanne Godboldo speaks Saturday at Hartford Memorial Baptist Church.
She's charged with assault and other crimes stemming from her refusal to
surrender her daughter to protective services on March 24. Behind Godboldo
is Ron Scott of the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality
Hundreds of people turned out for a rally in Detroit on Saturday to support a mother who was charged after holding police at bay last week when Children's Protective Services workers came to take her daughter, claiming medical neglect. Maryanne Godboldo said the state believes her daughter needs to be on a drug for psychosis. But Godboldo was weaning her 13-year-old off that medicine. "I want my daughter back, and I want her back today," Godboldo told the audience inside Hartford Memorial Baptist Church. She said she worries about her daughter, who was taken to a Northville psychiatric center for children."I'm calling on you, Detroit," Godboldo said, "to help me get my daughter back. I'm terrified."
Detroit Free Press
Related Links:
* Detroit Mother Jailed for Weaning Daughter Off Risperdal
Vera Hassner Sharav, AHRP
* Community Rallies Behind Mother Accused Of Stand-Off
Diane Bukowski, Voice Of Detroit
* Detroit Mother Jailed In Dispute Over Daughter's Medication - Vaccines, Psychotropics
Doug Guthrie, The Detroit News

8. Generic drug labels at core of wrenching court case

Said Roxanne Mensing, left, of her grandmother Gladys:
“It’s really taken a hit on all of us, and her especially.”
WASHINGTON: Gladys Mensing can no longer control the muscles in her tongue, face, arms and legs. It's hard for her to speak and nearly impossible for others to understand her. She can no longer live on her own. The 76-year-old Owatonna woman has an untreatable neurological disease known as tardive dyskinesia that she traces to a generic drug taken a decade ago. On Wednesday, Mensing's claim went before the U.S. Supreme Court. When it comes, the court's ruling will put a Minnesota stamp on a case that could affect the entire $77 billion generic drug industry. In her suit, Mensing is relying on a Minnesota law that requires drugmakers to warn of the risks. There are thousands of lawsuits like Mensing's nationwide awaiting the court's ruling. While the industry waits, Mensing's family ordeal continues.
Jeremy Herb, Star Tribune Minneapolis

9. Evidence Based Medicine: Making It Better

Dr Jacob M Puliyel MD is with the St Stephens Hospital, Delhi
Evidence Based Medicine began as a “bottom-up” paradigm that taught medical residents to search the literature for the best available evidence and to critically appraise it for making patient care decisions. As its popularity increased, there evolved a huge market for ready-made EBM summaries and reviews and there is now a scramble to provide this service. Those who provide the service come to wield tremendous influence and power. This article describes the evolution of this important tool and the pitfalls in how it is practised. People in the healthcare field need to understand all these aspects of EBM if they are to exploit its potential for public health.
Dr Jacob M Puliyel MD, Economic & Political Weekly

10. Conflict Of Interest Judge Asked To Quit In WikiLeaks Sailor Court Martial

The trial of a navy medic who refused to go to war suffered a false-start when Judge Alastair McGrigor was urged to stand down from the case. It comes after it emerged the QC had worked as a prosecutor for the Royal Air Force in the 2004 trial of Mohisin Khan, a Muslim air reservist who unsuccessfully absented himself from duty in Iraq as a conscientious objector. Leading Medical Assistant Lyons had applied for conscientious objector status when he refused to take firearms training last September ahead of a tour of Afghanistan. After reading about high losses of Aghan civilians on the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, Lyons applied for conscientious objector status and became the first person to appear before the Advisory Committee on Conscientious Objectors since 1996. Campaigners see the court martial as an attempt to deter other service personnel from opposing duty on grounds of conscience.
The Portsmouth News

11. WikiLeaks: the Pentagon connection

Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who in
1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers, after being
arrested at a rally in support of Bradley Manning,
the US Army private suspected of providing secret
documents to WikiLeaks last year
Commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Ellsberg contributed to a review of Vietnam War history and discovered what successive administrations really thought of the conflict. Unable to remain silent about the White House’s belief that the war was “unwinnable”, in 1971 he leaked the Vietnam history, known as the Pentagon Papers, to The New York Times and other US newspapers, defending his actions as upholding the highest principles of the US Constitution. Ellsberg says he wasn’t particularly surprised [in late 2006] to receive an encrypted email from WikiLeaks at his home near San Francisco. He might have been 75 years old, but he still had the old fire. Just a few years earlier he’d been arrested during a demonstration against the Iraq invasion. Though Julian Assange had always been a great admirer, what really put Ellsberg on the radar for WikiLeaks was a piece he wrote in Harper’s Magazine in September 2006 , expressing hope that someone would leak information about the US Government’s plans to invade Iran as a way to stop what he saw as an imminent US attack.
Andrew Fowler, Book Review, The Australian

12. Top Computer Scientists Back WikiLeaks Associates in Twitter Case

Jacob Appelbaum speaking on behalf of WikiLeaks
at The Next HOPE conference in New York in July 2010
The government should be required to obtain a search warrant to get the IP addresses of Twitter users linked to WikiLeaks, argues a court brief filed Thursday by a group of respected security experts who say the addresses carry a higher expectation of privacy than mere phone numbers. The brief was filed by Steve Bellovin, computer science professor at Columbia University; Matt Blaze, computer science professor at the University of Pennsylvania; Peter Neuman, principal scientist at SRI International; Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer at BT; and others. The experts urge a federal judge to overturn an order requiring Twitter to turn over IP addresses and other information on three WikiLeaks associates. The government’s acquisition of such data has serious implications for a person’s expectations of privacy, the technologists write, which should, in turn, “trigger greater judicial scrutiny of Constitutional issues that arise. ”
Kim Zetter, Wired

13. The UK Family Justice System Is A Corrupt National Scandal

Torn apart: the UK system of child protection is a national scandal
A quick flip through last week’s interim review of our family justice system might suggest that all is not entirely well with our family courts. The “system is not working”. It needs “significant change”. “Children and families do not understand what is happening to them.” The time taken to resolve cases is “little more than scandalous”. “Some cases should not be in court at all.” “The costs are huge.” “These are symptoms of a situation that cannot be allowed to continue.” But as I checked the report against what I have learnt about this horribly corrupted system, from the dozens of cases I have been following where children have been seized from their parents for no good reason, I had little sense that those responsible for this review have really begun to grasp just how bad the situation has become.
Christopher Booker, Daily Telegraph

14. UK Jobcentres tricking people out of benefits to cut costs, says whistleblower

The Guardian has been told that unemployed people are being tricked into breaching the rules so that benefits can be held back. Rising numbers of vulnerable jobseekers are being tricked into losing benefits amid growing pressure to meet welfare targets, a Jobcentre Plus adviser has told the Guardian."Suddenly you're not helping somebody into sustainable employment, which is what you're employed to do," he said. "You're looking for ways to trick your customers into 'not looking for work'. You come up with many ways. I've seen dyslexic customers given written job searches, and when they don't produce them – what a surprise – they're sanctioned. The only target that anyone seems to care about is stopping people's money."
John Domokos, The Guardian

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http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk