Trial by Error: NICE Rejects My FOI Request

By David Tuller, DrPH The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the U.K. organization that develops clinical guidelines for medical conditions, has rejected my freedom-of-information request for the names of the experts involved in the reassessment of the guidance for the illness it calls CFS/ME. This isn’t surprising, since the agency also recently rejected similar requests from the Countess of Mar and the ME Association. However, NICE’s response to the FOI request, which I received on Friday, contains some useful information and clarifies the decision-making process. I have included the NICE response below, but here are some key observations. The 2007 guidance, called CG53, endorsed cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy as the treatments of choice. According to the FOI response, the surveillance team that drew up the recently published “consultation document,” which recommends no change in this guidance, includes four NICE staffers: a technical analyst, a technical adviser, a clinical adviser and an associate director. In developing their proposal, they consulted with seven “topic experts”–three psychiatrists, two neurologists, a pediatrician and a patient representative. The surveillance team’s provisional decision to leave the guidance as is triggered this month’s two-week period for receiving comments from stakeholders. The final call will now be made by a group of eight top NICE employees, collectively called the “g...
Source: virology blog - Category: Virology Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs