Thursday 23 August 2018

My Open reply to the GMC regarding Dr Myhill's complaint.


On the 9th February 2018 I sent a letter supporting Dr Myhill's complaint to the GMC.

I received a standard reply that made no sense and here is my open reply back to them. A bit long but it is a big issue.

Dear Sir Terence Stephenson
Nuffield Professor of Child Health at University College London
Chair of GMC

Thank you for your considered response from Ian McCann, and I am glad you took your time to carefully review our concerns as there are 25,000 children’s lives at the heart of this long drawn out matter.

I can assure you I am not disappointed, neither am I surprised by your inaction to my concerns, nor was the 250,000 adults or the parents of the 25,000 children in the UK, who deal with this condition on a daily basis. All those around the world have long anticipated your reply. I guess, it was just a step we knew we had to go through. Furthermore, I am very used to the standard reply you gave me and that speaks volumes.

I am an patient Ambassador for Children with ME as part of #MedLearn, which is about shared learning between senior healthcare professionals, patients and carers’, I am one of the stakeholders on the NICE guidelines and am on the Community Engagement Partnership in my area, as well as a mother with a son, who has suffered by the training given to our local medical staff, by your listed trainers.

I take my roles very seriously and when I see harm being done, I report it and support those who would like to help make a better NHS, based on good governance, mutual respect, and a learning pathway that is open and honest.

There are over 25,000 very good reasons why I do this.

In my roles I read many papers and talk to many researchers and doctors all over the world. ME is not an opinion, a personal view or caused by psychosomatic reasons. ME is a very complex, multi system, debilitating and life-threatening condition, of which the research and understanding is being held back by some of your training members. Dr Ramsay tried to defend ME against fabricating and inducing mental illness on those that suffer ME, sadly he failed.

Can you confirm that you are not going to make those on your register; whether they be a doctor, on your special register or trainer to uphold their duty of candour.

·         Speak to a patient, or those close to them, as soon as possible after they realise something has gone wrong with their care.
·         Apologise to the patient – explain what happened, what can be done if they have suffered harm and what will be done to prevent someone else being harmed in the future.
·         Use their professional judgement about whether to inform patients about near misses – incidents which have the potential to result in harm but do not.
·         Report errors at an early stage so that lessons can be learned quickly, and patients are protected from harm in the future.
·         Not try to prevent colleagues or former colleagues from raising concerns about patient safety. Managers must make sure that if people do raise concerns they are protected from unfair criticism, detriment or dismissal. 

Dr Ramsay in 1986 said that this illness has an “alarming tendency to become chronic”, so we have always known that harm can be done to patients who are not listened to.

Dr Wakefield; who you struck off your register, the GMC stated he “abused his position of trust when conducting research” his “dishonest irresponsible and showed callous disregard for the distress and pain” cased to children. So why in your letter do you state to me, that you will not be taking the matter any further at this time? Who are you protecting? It is not our children. Please explain your actions and your obvious misinformation you gave me. You also quoted at me that, “An investigation can only be opened if the concerns raised are so serious that the doctor’s fitness to practise medicine is called into question.” Thousands of innocent patients are waiting for this clarification of why the difference between Wakefield and PACE trial authors, Sir Wessely, Crawley, Glaser, Parker.

It would seem to me you have not protected this group of patients, some of which are very young and vulnerable children, and I feel breaches the Ill-treatment and wilful neglect offences Act 2015?

You have enough evidence historically, through the parliament questions and Westminster debates along with children who are no longer able to live life, other than in an extremely constricted way and in constant pain, neglected by all medical professionals, due to the lack of understanding promoted by the PACE trial authors and supporters. 25,000 good reasons why the status quo cannot be allowed to continue. You need to give a full account of your inactions to the public.

Sir Robert Frances QC “Every time a patient or a colleague is deceived, intentionally or otherwise, public confidence in the service can be threatened”. I would suggest in this matter it has gone.

False allegations are thrown at parents with children that have hidden disability or chronic conditions which ME is one. It co exists with, EDS, VEDS, POTS, Mast Cell Activation, Celiac due to the misinformation issued by trainers on your register, these children are wilfully neglected. This is caused by medical teaching by your approved trainers.

This causes immense physical and emotional damage to the whole family, not just the young patient, and lasts a life time, like any form of abuse.

FII is being used as a form of abusive control, a weapon in two ways. Firstly, to make parents do what those that have full control of ME/CFS recommends, including pushing children on research trials and secondly when things go wrong to blame the parent, and hide their misconduct/misdiagnosis/ lack of understanding.

When parents are innocent, their innocence and what went wrong is never looked into publicly, due to the secretive nature that has been allowed to build up around FII; even when the parents have been publicly announced as abusers. The harms caused by those on your register as trainers, train medical staff in their beliefs that goes against all the biomedical research, as I mentioned in my complaint and this is growing.

Giving the wrong treatment to a large group of patients is against duty of candour, not reporting known harms is against the Shipman report, and not learning from historical mistakes is against humanity and informed consent.

Am I given to understand that you think as an organisation you are above all three?

Who are you protecting? It is not our children and you are showing callous disregard for the health and wellbeing of over 25,000 children around the United Kingdom.

I am aware you have connections with Bristol University and Oxford, so you will be aware of the historical problems of over 30 years of pushing CBT as a treatment, with no obvious rewards to patients. With nearly every trial being flawed on many levels.

You state your Role is: to oversee medical education and advise on good medical practice. So therefore, a fitness to be a trainer and to educate others, is within your domain of governance.

You are a public body, so therefore it is your public duty to protect the medical staff on your register from being misinformed and to stop bad practice by those that educate in their specialist field.

You are there to protect the public from harm? Since 2004 patients and some researchers along with doctors, have been talking of systemic harm with treatment of CBT and GET on those that have ME/CFS. That is 14 years and still you do not listen.

CBT is being rolled out for all conditions and is part of the IAPT, so this truth needs to come out as the country pays for this wrong approach in two ways – misdiagnosis leading to harm/death as patient’s symptoms are not being noted as important and financially when therapies through their own research shows that CBT has no positive effects, therefore a waste of public funds.

It is my opinion you have failed in your duty of candour. You are allowing further harm of those that suffer and of newly diagnosed to go through the same rehabilitation nightmare. You have been informed of harm, biomedical research historically and new, has consistently proven dysregulation in the many systems and the harm caused by a two-day CPET test. Yet you have chosen not to take action, therefore the known abuse continues. You cannot call it different opinion? You are now a party to that abuse, by your inaction of governance.

could you please explain the following to me -

When I looked on your register I find that Simon Charles Wessley is Reg no 2724740 is an approved trainer by yourselves. Please confirm this is the same Sir Simon Wessley with many accounts of his medical gaslighting towards patients verbal and written, carers, Doctors, advocates, journalists, professors and reviewers. His views are biased to the point of… well words fail. When you look at his fixation on Mass Hysteria with his paper on the Camelford water poisoning, Gulf War Syndrome, I am perplexed that he is still training medical staff. VEDS (life expectancy of 43 years and goes undiagnosed and allowed to be called MUPPETS), Lymes and ME are not any form of hysteria, they are physical conditions interlinked and with little biomedical researched done due to the views of a few. If these physical conditions cannot be picked up by biosocial lobby, there is something very wrong with our teaching of medicine. Tick bites and associated known illness along with shingles, have been around for many years, and their complex affects on the body known. Therefore, it is absurd not to look for causes and find facts of ME and just treat with increased activity. Even more so when the cardinal diagnostic difference in this illness is that the body starts to shut down 48 hours or so after any form of activity and not just physical activity, I go back to Dr Ramsay among others.

On your register is Michael Christopher Sharpe 2673545 Please let me know if this is the same Professor Sharpe who was part of the PACE trial. Recently his behaviour has been in the public and Parliaments eye with regards to the email sent to Carol Monaghan MP.  His disputed work is the one quoted as evidence based and forms the opinion, and I would suggest education of the medical profession as a whole. Professor Sharpe had four papers as evidence for the Occupational Aspects of the Management of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: a National Guideline 2006, I wonder who reviewed these papers. His methodology has been again questioned in the awful named trial of “Fatiogo” and on the NICE guidelines list of possible papers, so the problem perpetuates. There should have been a halt to his ability to do research, as you did with Wakefield. Public confidence is being lost in science, when the GMC do not administer governance or balanced discipline.

Esther Crawley 3545946 who is the lead researcher with the biggest grant in the UK for ME/CFS, that leads physical trials on vulnerable children, with little to no understating of co-existing conditions like POTS, VEDS, EDS Mast Cell and calls these conditions MUPPETS. The lead researcher on the SMILE trial, MAGENTA and FITNET-NHS - inform me what apart her trials play in your educational material. Medical staff not taught the relevance of POTS testing or significance of using heart rate monitors. This goes against NICE guidelines that she is very fond of quoting.

As with the Fatiogo trial if monitors are being worn what assurance do we have they will be a reporting outcome in her trials? or just hidden as with the other trials she has done? Harms are not listed and let’s remember anaerobic threshold that a normal athlete would reach at high peak intensity training, is reached doing daily tasks with these children, so harms would occur, breathlessness, chest pain and irregular heartbeats, causing distress and anxiety to young children. This is harmful with children that suffer both ME, POST and VEDS/EDS/hypermobile joints, this is of great concern. Dr Ramsay in 1986 defined ME with them in mind. The number of children made bedbound by treatment shows the harm and these need to be reported to enable medical staff and parents to understand ME better and be able to give informed consent.

This is without the way in which children are recruited. David Tuller can advise on the unethical approach. Wakefield only enlisted the help of a few children; Professor Crawley enlists the help of so many more; 700 on this new trial. Advertising to doctors of recovery even before she has started the trial. How can she possibly predict the result? Trials are there to prove or disprove, not assume the evidence will be there before the trial starts.

The SMILE trial was based on a private companies’ secretive approach and that once used tarot card reading as an aid to diagnosis? The cost of this treatment is well above what the NHS would spend on treatment for ME sufferers. This is wasting precious resources. How did any of her trials gain ethical approval, as reading the letters of concern is sad reading indeed with yet again many world renowned doctors and researchers signing an open letter.

Could you please confirm that Danya Ruth Glaser Reg no: 0291660 is the same who is also on the specialist register and recommends children having tantrums should be looked as possible FII cases, and also helped on the NICE guidelines with regards to FII.

As Alec Shelbrook has said “this was a clear example of a governments body over stepping their brief” as he explains “blurring the lines of abuse and normal childhood behavior”. This will make the lives of parents with children that have autism extremely difficult. Now she seems to be targeting parents with children with ME/CFS, MUS and probably the new FND. Why?

There has been great concern with how children with autism have been treated, again with many avoidable deaths. Many parents who have children with complex needs are being gaslighted with their concerns and knowledge.

Melanie Parker Reg No: 2639880  could you confirm this is the same Parker who works with children with ME.  If so, why is she also instructing professionals on how to accuse parents of FII when they have a medically diagnoseable Neurological condition as listed by the WHO. This shows a distinct lack of understanding and is harmful to children, their parents and their family life. I know of parents that have children that go to her clinic, now feel very threatened.

All five have either completed research or training that has formed medical understanding, influenced medical education and public opinion, endorsed by the GMC. They have influence/control over Choices, NICE, NHS, Science Media Centre; who protects Esther Crawley from her fictional abuse stories; as none of the abuse she openly talks about has been proven and one poster she used in a Bristol TEDtalk was made up, and which the artist asked her not to use. Getting paid to educating public, medical, dentists and police staff. This is your responsibility to correct the institutional and medical gaslighting of a group of patients, whose parents have no power to speak out. Your control is over the register of authorised trainers, specialists and doctors, why have you allowed this behaviour to continue?

The History and the evidence of many young adults and children’s lives brutalized.

Sophia Mirza autopsy report should have stopped opinion and caused medical staff to do no more harm. The recording of her being forcefully taken from her home still astounds me. What action was taken by the GMC against those that wilfully and skilfully perpetuated the abduction?

Please explain to me how the findings of her autopsy could possibly indicate that rehabilitation would work, that it is not serious condition and why doctors are not informed of the gravity of ME. This was back in 2005 (the year my son was born). In 2018 doctors who tried to help Merryn Croft were left helpless by your trainers’ opinions and against all biomedical science.

That doctor endured what others would deny. That doctor should have been supported by the biomedical knowledge we have. How many more like Merryn are there, I know of many.

13 years of knowing the inflammation of the dorsal ganglia and the pain that can cause, and we do what? Oxidative stress, Cori cycle, ion channels, and how TRP channels are highly involved with our sensory and pain. Don’t you think we should proceed with caution with regards to rehabilitation methods of vulnerable children, and doesn’t take into account thinking is the same as running a marathon with ME?

Sir John O’Hare QC who headed up the 14-year-old inquiry into avoidable deaths of young children in the Royal Belfast Hospital said (I will paraphrase for brevity) “there was an “indefensible” culture in which parents were “deliberately mislead” by doctors and health trust chef’s intent on “avoiding scrutiny” and protecting their own reputations.” I would suggest this whole affair is showing the same signs of avoidable suffering, not only within ME/CFS, but also EDS, Lymes, MUS, autism and FND and should and could be stopped now.

If we look more closely as with Karina Hansen (Denmark) who was taken away and suffered enforced rehabilitation and drugs that she did not need. Her parents were left helpless while abuse on their child was carried out. When parents are accused of FII they have no say and are silenced by the medical professionals. The trauma and sheer sickness of this act is being carried out throughout the UK. In Karina’s case, they have now asked another Doctor to come and look at her and what did she find:

On the 9th July 2018 psychiatrist Dr Charlotte Emborq appointed by the court in Holstebro to make an independent assessment of Karina’s health and her capacity to manage her own affairs. We do not have the full report, but what has been made public and shows:

“Karina does not suffer from any psychiatric illness. She does understand the role and purpose of her court-appointed guardian and she would like him to be removed from her case. She was found to be capable of managing her own finances.

How many children with ME languish in mental Hospitals in the UK, caused by your blind eye to other research and bias on someone’s considered opinion. How much suffering did Karina endure, we can only imagine but we can listen to Sophia Mirza and her mother. Read the reports and how they tried to take the good doctors who protect her down.

I am sure you are aware of how this is in the UK, as Dr Myhill has been taken to the GMC, is it 28 times? She has been stopped from speaking the truth as quoting from her book “I was heavily criticised once for stating that my CFS patients were in heart failure – this was considered an alarmist statement which scared patients” Well let me assure you, it is not as alarming as doctors not taking it seriously and leaving a child in this state for weeks, or good doctors not knowing what to do.

You are aware of expert paediatrician Dr Speight and how they have tried the same with him. I suggest you ask his council on the FII campaign - that has been going on for years. By his good council you will be able to see how much damage has been done to the family structure, and security of family life within the ME fraternity. Mistrust against doctors, the NHS and the GMC is inevitable as the truth unfolds and remember 25,000 is not a small number of children.

If you ask Countess Mar of the forward for ME parliamentary group; who has been asking for information over FII reporting. It is clear there is no way of seeing how many doctors wrongly accuse parents of FII and find they have misdiagnosed conditions, misrepresented evidence, causing harm and death. Therefore, the learning pathway on this is NIL. We are down to believing the doctors, which has proven historically dangerous for patient safety, especially with regards to Bristol hospital where Crawley is doing her research.

The Tymes Trust has helped many of those accused with no parents being found guilty of FII and once again if you ask for Jane Colby’s council, she will be able to assist you, in making sure you have a full and unbiased opinion on the matter.

It astounds me that misdiagnosis with near death or deaths are covered up with false FII accusations on parent’s. When found innocent they still have courts gagging orders. How is this allowed.

This is taken from your approved Paediatric Community Child Health Curriculum and is put under behaviour which goes against the World Health Organisation. Please explain.

Understand the principles of treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome/ME and the need to engage the family with a rehabilitative approach.  I do not see much engagement going on, I see forced harm.
You cannot blame the medical profession if they are not aware of an issue or wrong doing. Your education dictates a course of action that they follow on trust of your good governance. It is your responsibility with others to inform the medical staff of concerns, you must work as a team across all departments and the patient voice is the one you need to listen to, especially the children; past and present, so lessons can be learnt. We are not talking one or two children, or even hundreds we are talking thousands!

How can you in good conscience advocate to take well-meaning medical staff, that are following your recommended and approved trainers and approved educational curriculum, believing the structure and teaching they have been given, based on the PACE trial, (quoted at us as being “good solid evidence-based research”) through any complaints procedure as you advised me in your letter?
All or most hospitals list ME as a mental health issue of some kind or another and it is now being listed under “Functional Neurological Disorder” at a teaching hospital. It is obvious that no one is looking at the WHO definition of ME? Please explain why you do not re-educate these doctors under your register.

A quote from the email you sent me,
“The General Medical Council helps to protect patients and improve medical education and practice in the UK by setting standards for students and doctors. We support them in achieving (and exceeding) those standards and take action when they are not met.”

NOW PLEASE ACT UPON those words and inform me in detail with all the above points raised.
An update on Angus:
On Thursday 9th of August we took my son to receive his blood test results ordered by the paediatric. Even though he bathes in Epsom salts several times a day, his magnesium was only just within the normal range. If I had not known about possible magnesium deficiency, what would have happened to my son in the past 5 years of his illness?
Low Vitamin D and liver problem have only just been found. Unfortunately, they do not understand the relevance of these problems. Yet even though he has celiac disease his Vitamin B has not been tested.

If they had known about Cori cycle and Julia Newton and Dr Myhill they would understand the importance and give emergency and concern for his health. They have not taken EDS seriously. Furthermore, the POTS that he is diagnosed with at my request and even when I show that his heart rate goes up to 160 when standing, his symptoms have been put down to a three weeks anxiety attack? Your teaching, your responsibility.

I have great empathy when a doctor or consultant looks at me with dumbfounded hopelessness to know how to help my struggling son. It is truly heart-breaking when good considerate doctors are so let down by the GMC and their approved trainers. For my son it is taking his life away one inaction after another.

Finally, this is what we face on a daily basis. These doctors are on your register and are causing untold harm with no safeguards for young patients and their parents. No homes or foster carers are educated in how to care for the sever ME young person, how can they be when doctors are flouting the rules that should protect the public.



This letter will be an open letter and I will endeavour to send to as many influential people as possible.


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