Nobel Prize 1983

The Nobel Prize for Medicine 1983

and

How and why Intellectual Property thieves have stolen my ideas.

Intellectual property theft is the equivalent of stealing another mans car or house and claiming it to be their own, except that it involves stealing another mans ideas, methods, or inventions.

It is a much more common problem than most people realise, but with advances in computer and information technology, it is becoming a topic of discussion in the general media.

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I began studying my own ailments in 1975 because the symptoms were not evident on blood tests or x-rays, and my doctor was unable to diagnose or explain them, and the many medications which had been prescribed as treatment were not relieving them.

My first approach was to observe and describe each symptom in detail, and then read books of anatomy to determine the possible cause, and within a few years I was able to identify that poor posture was the common factor in those undetectable symptoms, and as a incidental consequence, I also proved that the old ideas of psychological cause were wrong.

One of the main symptoms was chronic fatigue, which I decided to treat by commencing an exercise program where, by trial and error, I was able to continue by walking or slowly jogging at my own pace, and within the range where the adverse symptoms did not occur, or were kept to a minimum, and I later applied similar principles to other aspects of my more general daily and weekly activities.

During that time I learned that some soldiers experienced that symptom during war, where it was known as ‘battle fatigue’, and I later determined that most of them were recruited from sedentary jobs, and had the minor symptoms of the ailment before enlistment, and that the types of conditions which caused the problem were their physique, poor training and preparation, poor food and water supply, infections such as typhoid, and excessive marching up and down hills for days or weeks at a time in cold and wet weather etc.

In the meantime I had been invited by the head of a medical research institute to design and co-ordinate a research project to enable some other patients with chronic fatigue to exercise. That project was successful and established a standard and reliable way of studying the problem, which could be used by any researcher in the future, and was widely reported in Australian newspapers.

About a decade later I found an illustration of the internal anatomy of a nineteenth century woman who wore tight corsets, where the chest and abdominal contents had been crushed and displaced. I immediately assumed that such women would have exactly the same range of symptoms which I had attributed to poor posture, and within a few months was able to confirm that fact.

I then became interested in the history of the topic in my search for more clues to the nature of the problem which were not available in modern literature, so I read books from the nineteenth century, and the seventeenth century, and then back to ancient Greece etc.

I also broadened my interest to the include the differences in physique, clothing styles, and health of the civilised countries of England, Europe, and the United States, and the natives of South Africa, North and South America, and Japan etc.

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More recently, in November 2012, I leant about a London doctor who had been given the John Maddox Prize for medicine, and when I found that it was for his research into chronic fatigue syndrome and exercise, I could see that it was the same as my ideas, so I looked into his biography.

He says that he became interested in undetectable illness in 1987 (just four years after I had completed a research project in 1983), and that he is described as helping to define  the newly recognised ailment called the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and that he had developed the ‘new’ type of treatment called “Graded Exercise Therapy”, where the patients are required to exercise at their own pace, and stay below the levels which cause adverse symptoms (exactly the same as my methods).

He was then granted a knighthood for his contributions to military medicine and research and treatment of post-war syndromes (which of course includes ‘battle fatigue’), and he describes himself as an epidemiologist (a person who studies the difference in health problems from one group, or  one culture, or one country to another).

It is highly unlikely that anyone would develop such a similar range of interests as myself unless they read my essays, books, and website, and then rewrote the ideas in different words and had them published in medical journals to create the false impression that they were his own ideas.

Nevertheless I did such  research and had much of it scientifically proven, and established as standard methods between 1975 and 1983, four years before Simon Wessely started.

I am 64, and he is only 57, and if he has been granted the John Maddox Prize, and a knighthood for his research, then I should, at the very least, be granted the Nobel Prize for Medicine back-dated to 1983.

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References:

1. My original research paper from 1983 here 

2. My ebook called The Posture Theory – the physical cause of undetectable illness, based on my printed book sub-titled – the physical basis for hypochondria, (with sections on chronic fatigue and exercise, and battle fatigue, the history of medicine, and the difference between body shapes and clothing styles, and their affect on health from one culture or country to another throughout history), and supporting evidence for my 15 essays which were published in the Australasian Nurses Journal between May 1978 and March 1983  – here