1922: Born, Aberdeen Scotland, daughter of a railway worker.
1938: Accepted to read medicine at Aberdeen University at only sixteen.
1944: Graduates a doctor at twenty-one, one of the youngest women ever to do so.
Meg trains in London with renowned surgeon, Sir Norman Tanner.
1947: Elected to the FRCS (Edinburgh), lone woman amongst the one hundred candidates—one of only twenty women who had become Fellows and the only one in General Surgery.
“I had wanted to be a surgeon for as long as I could remember. It was not so much the technical expertise that fascinated me as the rapidity with which surgical intervention could transform a person from near death to healthy life.”
1948: Goes to newly independent India as a medical missionary, holding a number of surgical/teaching posts and establishing and expanding community hospitals and clinics.
1953: Marries George Patterson, missionary, traveller, writer and human rights activist.
1961: For her ‘Outstanding Medical Services’ in India she is awarded the MBE.
1964: Moves to Hong Kong with her children to join her husband George, who is now a ‘China watcher’, journalist and author. Takes up the post of Surgeon-in-Charge of the Surgical Unit, Tung Wah Hospital, Hong Kong. The Colony is ‘the end of the opium trail and the beginning of a heroin pipeline’ – McCoy, 1972.
1966: George advises on the award-winning The Opium Trail (1966), the first television investigation into opium-production in the Golden Triangle; produced by legendary film-maker Adrian Cowell and cameraman Chris Menges, later awarded an Academy Award.
1972: Dr Wen, Head of Neurosurgery at the Tung Wah hospital, uses the relaxing of the border with China to study electro-acupuncture, used there for post-surgical pain control – Ji Sheng Han of Peking University, and his team, had been studying the mechanisms involved in acupuncture and electro-acupuncture analgesia since 1965.
“The dramatic nature of what I was seeing happening with the drug addicts daily, and the immense potential if a scientifically accredited system of addiction treatment could be devised, fascinated me…”
1972: On November 9th it was discovered that two heroin-addicted surgical patients at the Tung Wah no longer craved their drug after having electro-acupuncture. The treatment is given to other addicts, Chinese, European and American.
1973: 100 Hong Kong opiate addicts were successfully treated in the short-term by electro-acupuncture – the results are reported in medical press (Wen & Cheung, 1973; Patterson, 1974).
Meg returns to London where she gives up surgery to research electro-stimulation.
As Meg starts developing her own medical stimulators she also moves away from the Chinese electro-acupuncture techniques, replacing ear-inserted needles with ear-electrodes; and later, flat electrodes placed behind the ear. Forty minute stimulation sessions, as practiced in Hong Kong, are superseded by continuous stimulation in order to provide on-going relief and accelerated recovery. Meg names her approach ‘NeuroElectric Therapy’.
With no publicity, word-of-mouth leads to an increasing demand for NET treatment. She and George initially treat addicts in their Harley Street home – as private clinics are still largely unwilling to accept heroin patients.
1974: An application at this time to conduct a clinical investigation of NET in drug addiction is rejected by UK Medical Research Council on the basis Meg is not a psychiatrist and thus, on the basis of the recent Brain Report recommendation of addiction specialists, ‘not qualified’ to pursue such research.
1975: Meg publishes her ‘Interim Report’ in the United Nations Bulletin of Narcotics. NET appears to be effective in facilitating medium-term abstinence, with the majority of traced patients claiming to remain drug-free after ten months. Following several high profile, celebrity successes, this research is increasingly funded by the music world.
1975: First documentary on NET, ‘Off the Hook’ made by the BBC, who investigate the treatment and film a heroin addict successfully coming off his drug.
1977: A follow-up BBC documentary, ‘Still Off the Hook’, creates further interest in the treatment and leads to philanthropic funding by the Rank Foundation. One year’s clinical trial of NET follows along with other funding for further research.
1978: The first NET clinic opens in Sussex, England. This combines NET detoxification with short-term, intensive rehabilitation programme. This rapid detox-rehab model, developed at the Broadhurst Clinic, attracts considerable interest. One in four of the Clinic’s patients are funded by a charity set up by George and Meg.
1979: Meg Patterson produces her Model IV stimulator for use in the, year-long, clinical trial at Broadhurst. This becomes famously known as the ‘black box’. It is a hand-adjusted stimulator that offers the wearer 40,000 possible wave-form combinations.
1979: Research into the scientific basis of NET begins at Marie Curie Memorial Foundation Research Laboratories in the UK. Meg is granted the status of ‘Visiting Professor’, at the University of Pennsylvania Addiction Research Centre. She also carries out brief pilot at a US Government treatment facility..
The BBC make another documentary about NET treatment, filmed during 1979 and 1980.
1980: The first conference on NET is held at Royal Society of Medicine in London. Speakers include Dr Robert Becker, pioneer in bone healing by electrostimulation; Dr Irving Cooper, pioneer in cryogenic surgery and cranial implantation of electrodes for control of involuntary movement disorders; Dr John Hughes, co-discoverer of enkephalins and Dr John Liebeskind, international authority on endogenous mechanisms of pain inhibition.
1980: Broadhurst Clinic closes – bridging finance to move from a grant-supported facility to a self-sustaining concern cannot be obtained in time.
1981: Airing of BBC’s programme on NET, Open Secret – The Black Box.
1981: Meg begins follow-up research on NET patients treated over previous seven years.
She and George move to USA in order to develop a new automated, pre-programmed, electro-stimulator, which Meg believes is essential for accelerated training in, and the use of, NET. While still treating patients, she continues to seek funding and broader support for scientific research and clinical evaluation of NET.
1982: A series of scientific papers on NET is published. These confirm the beneficial effect of this treatment, and that NET is waveform-specific – Capel et al. 1979, 1982, 1982, 1982. The papers suggest that NET can therapeutically impact on the brain’s neurotransmitters which underpin all addiction and recovery processes. These findings confirm Meg’s belief that NET works by accelerating the normally-slow neurotransmitter re-balancing process.
1983: The science magazine, OMNI, publishes a major article ‘Brain Tuner’, an in-depth investigation into NET, by the respected journalist Kathleen McAuliffe.
1984: A seven-year follow-up of NET is published in the Journal of Bioelectricity. NET delivers a detox drop-out rate of only 1.6%, and a long-term drug-free rate of 80%, when combined with brief but intensive residential rehabilitation. The treatment demonstrates itself to be free of side-effects and harmful consequences.
The NET research Model VII is produced in America. This is the first NET device with fully automated treatment protocols. As a result the training-time requirement for NET practitioners is substantially reduced.
1986: While seeking further funding for her work, traveling between the USA and Britain, Meg continues to provide private treatments. As interest in electro-medicine rises, opportunists begin to use Meg’s name, and that of ‘the black box’, to sell treatments.
1988: Meg is invited to visit Russia for their first international conference addressing drug addiction and alcohol abuse. In addition to a long-standing interest in electro-sleep, Russian scientists and psychiatrists have developed their own electro-stimulation approach for the treatment of alcoholism. Interest in Meg Patterson’s application of the technique is therefore high.
1992: A report is published on an attempt at a double-blinded investigation of NET, conducted at the University of Pennsylvania – Gariti et al. 1992. The outcome is inconclusive, though the investigation confirms that electrostimulation delivers “comfortable detoxification and substantial improvement.” Why British and American regulating authorities demand the same, double-blinded, validation test for a sensation-based electrostimulation device as for a consumable medicine has never been explained.
1995: Despite declining health George and Meg Patterson have now spent over a decade moving between the UK and USA, trying to raise funds in order to put NET on a sound financial footing. However, the absence of a permanent residential address and their own treatment centre, a lack of patents and other commercial protections, together with the reluctance of the FDA or equivalent to grant approvals, leads to a gradually waning of interest in NET – other than from a constant stream of addicts wanting treatment.
1999: NET treatment pilots are established in Australia, Mexico and Romania using the new 803 electrostimulator. As previously, the pilots are open-evaluations intended to demonstrate a prima facie case and encourage funding for clinical trials, so leading to regulatory approval.
Research into NET using addicted pregnant rats finds no foetal loss or abnormalities with opioid detoxification (Little & Patterson, 1996). This evidence suggests that NET detoxification may be safe with pregnant heroin addicts.
Meg has a major stroke. She and George move back to Scotland for medical care. The work of NET is continued by the family and other supporters in what will effectively be a fresh start, with progressing technology and evidence-base.
2002: Meg dies after a long illness.
2007: Under independent scrutiny and scientific observation the new evidence-generating process is started in Scotland.
