In Denmark, as well as internationally, MCS sufferers are angry and indignant with the Research Center for Fragrance and Chemical Sensitivity, which was established in 2006 by the Danish Ministry of Environment. Its main aim was to conduct research into the connection between MCS and chemicals. There is a good reason for this indignation since it is evident that the Research Center’s aim is not to find any real knowledge about MCS, least of all a connection between exposures to chemical substances and MCS.
On the contrary, the Research Center’s aim is to produce counterfeit/fraudulent research on MCS.
The center is a political instrument designed by a three—stage rocket:
A. Acquit the environment, i.e. “prove” that MCS is not caused by exposures to chemical substances from the environment.
B. ’Prove’ that MCS is associated with psychological factors in order to obtain psychiatrisation of MCS.
C. Get MCS sufferers to fall within psychiatry (liaison psychiatry) so that psychiatry can develop treatments for MCS sufferers: “Mindfulness” i.e. cognitive psychotherapy, perhaps electroshock (ECT) in severe cases, and soon the pharmaceutical industry, which probably is sitting poised, to develop psychoactive drugs for MCS sufferers.
And how has the Research Center for Fragrance and Chemical Sensitivity done this?
Well, here we must understand that their study and publication: “Attention to Bodily Sensations and Symptom Perception in Individuals with Environmental Intolerance” by Sine Skovbjerg, Robert Zachariae, Alice Rasmussen, Jeanne Duus Johansen, and Jesper Elberling in Environ Health Prev Med, DOI 10.1007/s12199•009•0120-y, is the key to the fraud.
1. GETTING RID OF THE CHEMICALS
Part 1: “Let’s change the name”
To begin with, the Research Center agreed on using the label “IEI” instead of “MCS”. This was smart thinking. At the meeting with the board of MCS-Denmark on May 18th, 2010, the Research Center argued that they used this label because IEI is a broader term than MCS and that they would not have been able otherwise to get the article published in an international journal. This is bullshit of course. The real reason is to be found on page 2 of Sine Skovbjerg’s PhD Thesis: “Multiple Chemical Sensitivity – psychological factors, patient strategies and healthcare practices”: “The label ‘MCS’ has been criticized for implying unproven assumptions about causation, and instead the label ‘Idiopathic Environmental Intolerance’ IEI has been recommended to replace it.”
The Research Center obviously wanted to exclude the idea of a causal connection between MCS and exposures to chemical substances. To complete this intention, in the same article the researchers went so far as to yield the misinformation that their MCS subjects were diagnosed with IEI by a physician. That, of course, is a lie – all subjects had been diagnosed with MCS by a physician.
When the board of MCS-Denmark confronted them with questions about why they had written that the patients were physician diagnosed with IEI, when they all were diagnosed with MCS already, they replied by handing over an article: ”International Programme on Chemical Safety / World Health Organization (IPCS/WHO), Conclusions and Recommendations of a Workshop on Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS)”, Geneva, Switzerland. Regul Toxicol Pharmacol 1996; 188-189. According to the Research Center, this article describes the reasons for using label ‘IEI’. Now, the Research Center also refers to the article on their website.
However, there was a snag in the article that the Research Center “forgot” to discuss on their website. MCS-Denmark discovered this article is not a WHO article at all, as it might seem at first glance. It is also not disclosed who criticized the MCS label and instead recommended IEI either. However, it all falls into place if one scrutinizes the IPCS/WHO article, as Ann McCambell has done. The truth behind this article is that “WHO” was one of the sponsors of the workshop: “lnternational Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS)” on MCS held in Germany in February 1996. This workshop was dominated by participants associated with the industry and had no representatives from environmental, labor, or consumer groups. Instead the non-governmental participants were individuals employed with BASF, Bayer, Monsanto, and Coca Cola.”Representation came from individuals from the chemical industry and the pharmaceutical industry which often is the same thing. For example: “Monsanto, known for making Roundup and other herbicides, is a wholly owned subsidiary of a pharmaceutical company called Pharmacia. BASF makes pharmaceutical products and pesticides and Bayer, famous for making aspirin, manufactures the popular neurotoxic pyrethroid insecticide Tempo (active ingredient cyfluthrin).”
At this meeting the decision was made to try to change MCS into IEI.
”Besides getting the word ‘chemical’ out of the name, the workshop participants chose to add the term ‘idiopathic’, apparently because they thought it meant the illness was “all in people’s head” rather than of unknown etiology (cause). But lots of ‘real’ diseases are also considered ‘idiopathic’, such as idiopathic epilepsy (epilepsy not resulting from trauma, surgery, infection, or other obvious causes). Still, implying that MCS has no known cause helps the industry. They do not want to be held responsible for their products causing MCS, or for that matter triggering symptoms in people sensitized to them.”
However, what the Research Center for Fragrance and Chemical Sensitivity ‘just happened to forget’ to inform on their website and which MCS-Denmark discovered from the May 18th, 2010 meeting regarding the article not originating from WHO is quite the opposite. “The WHO issued a statement to the workshop participants after the meeting to try to put a stop to claims that WHO supported the name change from MCS to IEI. It stated, “A workshop report to WHO, with conclusions and recommendations, presents the opinions of the invited experts and does not necessarily represent the decision or the stated policy of WHO.” It goes on to say that: “With respect to ‘MCS,’ WHO has neither adopted nor endorsed a policy or a scientific opinion.” (World Health Organization. Note to invited participants in the MCS Workshop, February 21-23, 1996, Berlin, Germany 6/7/96.) ” “(1) (2) As Ann McCambell states: “Despite this explicit disclaimer, claims that the World Health Organization supports IEI continue to be made by MCS opponents”. (1)
It is thus evident that the Research Center’s justification for using the label ‘IEI’ for MCS does not stem from the WHO, but instead from the chemical industry. However, the Research Center ‘forgot’ to inform the public of WHO’s disclaimer both on their website and to MCS-Denmark. Consequently, the IEI label is the chemical industry’s manipulation trick — a lie label to hide the fact that MCS is induced by chemical substances. No serious MCS scientists use this fraudulent MCS label. The term ‘IEI’ is only used by scientists under the influence of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, some parts of psychiatry and the Research Center for Fragrance and Chemical Sensitivity because they want to “demonstrate” that MCS has nothing to do with chemicals and that psychological factors and individual brain malfunctioning are involved in MCS etiology.
2. GETTING RID OF THE CHEMICALS
Part 2: “We do not know what is poisoning”
Simultaneously with these hoaxes, the Research Center inserted onto their website their scientific preconceptions and epistemological grounds for their research on MCS. Here they describe that MCS cannot be a poisoning condition. This is the second track of the lie that MCS has nothing to do with chemicals.
They state: “Some fragrant and chemical sensitivity sufferers experience their condition as a form of poisoning. Fragrance and chemical sensitivity cannot be explained by a toxicological mechanism. A toxicological mechanism requires a so-called exposure response (i.e. increasing effect and risk with increasing exposure) but there is no evidence that fragrance and chemical sensitivity appears more frequent among persons subjected to high chemical exposure levels, e.g. in their jobs.” (mcsvidencenter.dk)
This fundamental scientific preconception and epistemological paragraph in the Research Center’s approach to MCS regarding their understanding of poisoning is wrong because it does not take into account that this definition of poisoning is only about acute poisoning.
As a result, the Research Center completely ignores the fact that in much new research – especially in terms of environmental diseases, i.e. medical conditions triggered by environmental factors – this definition of poisoning has been abandoned in favor of a new paradigm. In this new paradigm, poisoning is not necessarily dose respondent with increasing effect and risk with increasing exposure, but low doses at repeated exposures are equally toxic.
The latter approach is represented by the French recognized cancer scientist, Professor Belpomme, President of the renowned French cancer research institute ARTAC (Association pour la Recherche Thérapeutique Anti-Cancéreuse) in Paris, France. Besides researching into cancer, ARTAC now also research into Electro Hyper Sensitivity (EHS) from which many MCS patients also suffer and have in 2009 by means of brain scans documented that EHS sufferers have hypo perfusion (low blood flow) in the brain by exposures to electromagnetic fields / radiation (EMF/EMR).
In his book “Avant qu’il ne soit trop tard” (“Before it’s too late”) Belpomme explains that it has now been clearly demonstrated that small doses of toxic substances can induce chronic diseases. Therefore, he says, those physicians and scientists – for example those at the Research Center who assert that MCS sufferers get sick of small doses of chemical substances that are completely non-toxic – not only are wrong but make double faults. First, in making a scientific mistake, because today we know that small doses of physical / chemical (radiation / chemical ) pollution may induce chronic diseases (e.g. cancer) and secondly in making an epidemiological mistake with fatal consequences for public health. Because waiting for the evidence of a poison mechanism (e.g. concerning MCS and EHS) is the same as to prepare for something much worse than today, both in terms of human and economic consequences.
In this light the Research Center’s fumblings are no less than a scandal. On completely unqualified grounds, they believe they know that MCS is not related to poisoning. For instance, Jesper Elberling said to an MCS patient that her symptoms are due to the circumstance that “her brain sensor is broken so that she overreacts and believes the smells are toxic although they are not.”
But Elberling and Skovbjerg make fatal errors, as well as scientific errors, since the rule of dose-dependent exposures response only regards acute exposures but not chronic poisoning. Likewise, they neither query the nature of the chemical substances in question nor the repetition of exposures which according to MCS sufferers are so very characteristic of their illness (due to the small doses).
As is seen, Elberling and Skovbjerg are neither interested in the duration of exposures to chemical substances (the time factor) nor in the organism’s state (the chronicity).
Belpomme writes: “It is evident in terms of environmental pollution with chemical substances that the majority of diseases they induce are not caused by acute toxicity. In these cases it is not the dose that makes the poison but the repetition. This concept is relatively new and it is not only a matter of chemical substances but also of radiation. Our prescribed regulations (the dose-respondent rule) do indeed protect us from acute poisoning, but do not protect us against chronic diseases caused by prolonged exposures to low doses. In case of chronic exposures, one must therefore consider the factor: time much more than the actual dose. The longer the exposures last, the higher the probability of developing a chronic disease, especially cancer.” (p.73) (3)
Virtually all MCS sufferers clearly declare that their MCS is being exacerbated over time by repeated small exposures to a variety of chemical substances. Many researchers (e.g. Martin Pall) point out the fact that a range of these chemical substances are extremely neurotoxic (toxic to the nervous system) and a host of other chemical substances are known to cause other toxic effects in the organism. On these grounds it is incredibly unqualified and amateurish for the Research Center to assert as a starting point that MCS cannot be caused by a toxicological mechanism.
In these two ’wily’ ways, the Research Center, a priori, excluded the environmental factor – the chemical trail. But that obviously did not suffice. Now it had to be proved that there are psychological factors involved in MCS.
And how was that done?
3. GETTING RID OF THE CHEMICALS
Part 3:”Let’s falsely translate”
Well, as a starting point they manipulated the research and the questionnaire test of Eva Millqvist: “A Short Chemical Sensitivity Scale for Assessment of Airway Sensory Hyper Reactivity,” by Steven Nordin, Eva Millqvist, Olle Löwhagen, and Mats Bende in Int Arch Occup Environ Health (2004) 77: 249-254, DOI 10.1007/s00420-004-0504-7. This research contains a validated test to quantify SHR (Sensory Hyperreactivity, a subcondition of MCS). The SHR sufferers have symptoms primarily from the airways when exposed to chemical substances.
The Research Center chose this questionnaire, and sent it out to many MCS sufferers and non-MCS subjects. However, there was a snag in it because they deliberately translated seven out of eleven questions falsely into Danish. While the original questions of the validated CSS-SHR test, which together with the capsaicin test can diagnose SHR, ask about people’s behavioural and emotional reactions to exposures to chemical substances (”odeous / pungent substances”), the Research Center changed them in the Danish translation into questions on people’s behavioural and emotional responses to odors (“scents and chemical odors”). Clever.
Quite imperceptibly, the questions have been changed into people’s reactions to smells, but smells and chemicals are not synonymous concepts. And when people can only respond to the questions, the answers will of course respond to people’s responses to odors.
4. NEARLY IN THE BAG
MCS individualized and psychiatrized
Finally the way was paved to correlate these responses with a series of psychiatric tests and for a finding that MCS sufferers have idiosyncratic perceptions of smells and thus an increased unhealthy amount of attention to bodily symptoms, and they are also often sad. Hocus pocus, MCS has become individualized. It is the individual MCS sufferers that are said to have an increased unhealthy amount of attention (’enhanced internal information’) to non-toxic fragrances and with the correlation with psychiatric tests, the conclusion suggested that MCS sufferers’ symptomatology is psycho-pathological but that it is not known whether psychopathology and individual susceptibility to hypersensitivity reactions are part of the MCS etiology or merely amplifying factors. “It is likely that the etiology of IEI is multi- factorial, and as for somatoform disorders, it can be argued that the complexity of IEI is best studied from a bio-psycho-social perspective” (s.38).
It is hence concluded that MCS is a somatoform disorder and – hocus pocus – MCS is now psychiatrized.
Thus was the recipe for this indigestible dish in the cookbook:
“Lies and manipulation in preparation for dishonest and fake research”
The ingredients are:
- Faulty and outdated definition of poisoning
- New (old) chemical industry invented name (IEI)
- Forged medical diagnoses (IEI) (and toxicology and environmental medicine out of the picture)
To this must be added:
- Counterfeit questionnaires via mistranslation, thus turning chemical substances into scents and ’somatisation’, no, no: ’Bodily Distress Syndrome’ diagnosis.
Finally the dish is served: On the table is now a psychiatric disorder, i.e. a mixture of physical disorder (brain-related error: ’the brain sensor is broken’) and possibly genetics (individual susceptibility) and psychiatric illness (depression, anxiety).
And where does this big magic trick lead?
5. THE MAGIC COMPLETED
MCS falls within psychiatry and patients must be psychiatrically treated
Well, it leads to the powerful psychiatry movement which stands ready to receive patients – and especially money. MCS is now ’meaningfully’ called scent sensitivity in the special issue of the Danish Weekly Journal of Physicians (Ugeskrift for Læger no. 24, 14 June 2010) on functional disorders. Don’t miss that, and is now labeled as a functional disorder. The falsehood is complete, because that was what it was all about, wasn’t it?
Now, MCS patients do no longer pose a danger to society, the chemical industry and the insurance companies. But of course they need treatment that is self-evident, because we feel so sorry for them that some people think they malinger. So they obviously must have psychiatric treatment: cognitive psychotherapy and perhaps in severe cases electroshock. And just you wait, the next thing is of course, that the nice pharmaceutical industry is ready with some psychoactive drugs so that the poor MCS sufferers can have their “broken brain sensor” repaired and in addition their depression and anxiety.
The conclusion is therefore that the Research Center for Fragrance and Chemical Sensitivity is part of the powerful psychiatrisation campaign taking place worldwide at the moment.
In USA, a revision of the DSM diagnostic system has now for a long time been on its way. DSM is the counterpart to the international ICD-10. Here it has been understood that the patients who are ill from the ‘new’ conditions – Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), Fibromyalgia (FMS) and now MCS (and soon EHS – they have just not discovered it yet) – do not accept that their diseases are classified as “somatoform disorders”, i.e. mental disorders. So what to do instead? Well naturally they invented new ‘dignified’ names such as “Bodily Distress Syndrome,” for psychiatrists love fancy names for which they don’t have a shred of evidence. It is pure magic of words. (4) How stupid do they think we are, because the essence is of course identical.
As Evelyn Pringle writes, it’s the same old story of psychiatry trying to extend its diagnostic labels and drug treatment to new target groups and she quotes Toxicology Expert Dr. Lawrence Plumlee, President of the Chemical Sensitivities Disorders Association and Editor of “The Environmental Physician of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine”:
“This is an effort by psychiatry to psychiatrize physical illnesses and to try to suppress the complaints of these patients by prescribing psychiatric drugs. But experience is showing that psychiatric procedures and drugs are making patients worse. Using psychiatric diagnoses and drugs on diseases of neurotoxicity helps the chemical companies in two ways. It fools some people into thinking that poisoned people are crazy, thus getting the poisoners (chemical companies) off the hook, and two, it sells more chemicals (psychiatric drugs) to treat those who really need detoxification, not more chemicals in their bodies.”(5)
Do bear in mind: This is what we are up against.
Author:
Eva Theilgaard Jacobsen, MSc in Psychology, Specialist in Psychotherapy, October 2010
References:
- Ann McCambell: “Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Under Siege” Chair Multiple Chemical Sensitivities Task Force of New Mexico
- World Health Organization: “Note to invited participants in the MCS workshop “21-23 February 1996, Berlin, Germany 6/7/96.
- Dominique Belpomme: “Avant qu’il ne soit trop tard”. Fayard 2007.
- Kroenke, Sharpe, Sykes: “Revising the Classification of Somatoform Disorders: Key Questions and Preliminary Recommendations”, Psychosomatics 48:4, July-August 2007.
- Evelyn Pringle: “Tracking the American Epidemic of Mental Illness“, June, 22, 2010
- -
* It is part of the Research Center’s policy and methods that their communications and information are ambiguous. After all, one of their most important staff members is a journalist. Internationally, the Research Center’s name is: “The Danish Research Center for Chemical Sensitivities,” but for the home audience the Center’s name is “The Research Center for Fragrance and Chemical Sensitivity.” There is a purpose for this. The key to the fraudulent article, “Attention to bodily sensations and symptom perception in individuals with IEI” has now been reported to the Danish Ministry of Research for fraudulent research by MCS sufferers, primarily because of their forging Eva Millqvist’s research, by deliberately wrongly translating “Odeous/pungent substances”, i.e. chemical substances, into Danish “fragrances and chemical odors” in their translation of her validated CSS-SHR test in a questionnaire forwarded to many people, including MCS sufferers. In doing so, they have fabricated fraudulent data so that people’s reactions to chemical substances have been turned into reactions to fragrances/scents. In this way, they tried to remove the causal connection between chemical substances from the environment and MCS. This paved the way to individualization and psychiatrisation of MCS so that Danish psychiatrists now can diagnose MCS as a “functional disease” (cause unknown), doctors can refer MCS-sufferers for psychiatric treatment and diagnosis, and MCS-sufferers will be denied public disability pension and compensation from insurance companies. However, internationally the Research Center tries to appear as serious MCS researchers. But just ask them about Martin Pall’s article in Ballantyne, Maars & Syvertsen’s “General and Applied Toxicology”, and you will get the answer that they think it is too difficult to understand. If it was not so tragic, it is quite amusing. They are a bunch of amateurs with a nurse as leader. This is what Denmark has become after 10 years with a right-wing government, (the Research Center was founded and is paid for by the government).
Series: “The Danish MCS Research Centre in the International Field of Vision”
As we have reported previously, when integrative practitioners treat the whole patient, their treatments often challenge traditional models of medicine. State medical boards are aligned with the American Medical Associa- tion’s brand of allopathic medicine. Because of this, they have historically been biased against complementary and alternative medicine—to the point that they not infre- quently target practitioners specifically for practicing a higher standard of care.
