THERE is a crucial inaccuracy in a headline I read; Northern Ireland's only ME Clinic closes down (September 18). This was a clinic, like the other 12 in the UK, which treated patients with many kinds of illness, each having different physical and/or psychiatric origins, subsumed under the generic Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, to which people who have Myalgic Encephalomyelitis are also referred. I don't think any one of them has "ME Clinic" on the door.

Although CFS and ME are often used interchangeably and said to be synonymous, they ought not to be because ME is not fatigue at all, as we normally understand it, it is not a psychiatric illness and there is ample evidence to justify its recognition as a discrete neurological illness, as recognised by the World Health Organisation.

Yet ME sufferers are bundled indiscriminately with these others and given the same two treatments, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) and Graded Exercise Treatment (GET), even though all the research – including their own – shows there is no lasting benefit, without relapse, from CBT and GET makes a majority worse.

It may seem strange then that any ME sufferer would lament the passing of such a facility and, indeed, some are pleased to see them go. Of course, all ME sufferers would like a local clinic but they have been fiercely divided about how to achieve this, since this network was set up in 2004. As it is, most ME sufferers, especially the more severely affected, cannot travel to the nearest clinic because they are too ill and immobile.

There is no sign of the clinics introducing any new treatments for ME sufferers, as some increasingly angry and frustrated reps, who sat on steering committees and approved them, are discovering. Indeed, how could they introduce any new treatment until they have discovered an appropriate and effective one? And how will they pay for the research to discover what that is when every penny is going into the treatment given at the clinics which is not helping but hindering? The vicious circle is perpetuated because the clinics are run by the same people who recommended them and advise government to endorse them.

Some people take the view that we should hang on to these clinics because, if they close, we shall be left with nothing and never get anything else. This is not true because there are GPs to provide primary care for symptom relief, such as pain.

This organisation believes it would be better to have no treatment at all than one which does no good and may do harm. We suggest that these treatments are suspended, pending valid and reliable research. Only after this should ME sufferers get their wish of specialist care and treatment for them.

Dr John Greensmith,

ME Free For All.org

North Street,

Downend,

Bristol.