An Interview With Mt Sinai’s David Putrino About Long Covid, ME/CFS, and Related Issues

By David Tuller, DrPH

David Putrino is a neuroscientist and physical therapist at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. He runs a research lab and a rehabilitation center that quickly became a magnet for patients grappling with what has come to be known as long Covid–what the US National Institutes of Health calls post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 (PASC). We spoke today about his background and how he began treating long Covid patients, the symptom of post-exertional malaise, the tendency to psychologize medical conditions like long Covid and ME/CFS, etc.

Most people, including me, don’t want to watch hour-long zoom things. I’ve posted a few videos recently and, to make it easier for viewers, have tried to keep them to half an hour or even less–but that’s hard! There’s always a lot more to talk about, and always questions I want to ask but don’t manage to get to. (This one clocks in at 22 seconds over 30 minutes, so it just missed my target cut-off.) I hope to be able to speak with Dr Putrino again.

Comments

12 responses to “An Interview With Mt Sinai’s David Putrino About Long Covid, ME/CFS, and Related Issues”

  1. Sandra Avatar
    Sandra

    Thank you, Dr. Tuller, for another insightful interview. I also wish to extend my deepest gratitude to Dr. Putrino for his straightforward presentation of these issues important to so many people with Long-Covid as well as ME/CFS. I was so impressed with recent Twitter postings from Dr. Putrino regarding these same issues. It is so refreshing to hear from someone who truly grasps the significance of what patients are dealing with, and not try to write it off as depression or anxiety. It is so refreshing to hear the truth regarding patient experiences, even if that goes against the stream of misinformation so many health care professionals choose to believe. Thank you, Dr. Putrino for your honesty, your willingness to believe what patients are telling you, and for your intellectual curiosity that recognizes a new paradigm is being called for in order to truly help these patients. I am most grateful.

  2. CT Avatar
    CT

    What should be done if patients with unexplained symptoms don’t improve? Compare and contrast the above video clip and David Putrino’s approach from 25.13 to 28.42 to the clip between 24.12 and 30.20 of this -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_q3fzhGtUw&t=1727s. I know which approach I’d prefer. Outcomes are kind of important, and for the whole set, not just a subset.

    “Believe everyone” – that would be my motto too. To my mind, it needs to be medicine’s motto because without it medicine is lost. Thank goodness there are people like Dr Putrino who do believe patients.

    I’m deeply disappointed that the SIDM seemingly doesn’t or won’t stand up to/condemn the MUS psychosomatic construct when it is causing so much misdiagnosis and doing so much harm. This article -https://www.improvediagnosis.org/improvedx-july-2019/unexplained-symptoms-when-diagnostic-uncertainty-becomes-a-diagnosis/ may have been getting there, but it comes across to me as believing other doctors and believing the biased literature, rather than stressing the need to believe the suffering patient. Things have to change, and change fast. As the SIDM article points out, women make up the majority of MUS patients. Doctors need to confront, challenge and contest their colleagues’ long-held opinions and beliefs – they can’t keep being comradely to each other when so much harm is being done, when patients (especially women) are being gaslighted and neglected by their doctors on a massive scale. Let’s hope that Long-Covid triggers a change to the management of patients with medically unexplained conditions in general.

  3. Dean M Jackson Avatar
    Dean M Jackson

    “Virologists primarily believe in the existence of viruses, because they add allegedly “infected” blood, saliva or other body fluids to the tissue and cell culture, and this, it must be stressed, after having withdrawn the nutrients from the respective cell culture and after having started poisoning it with toxic antibiotics. They believe that the cell culture is then killed by viruses. The key insight, however, is that the death of the tissue and cells takes place in the exact same manner when no “infected” genetic material is added at all. The virologists have apparently not noticed this fact! According to the most basic scientific logic and the rules of scientific conduct, control experiments should have been carried out. In order to confirm the newly discovered method of so-called “virus propagation”, in order to see whether it was not the method itself causing or falsifying the result, the scientists would have had to perform additional experiments, called negative control experiments, in which they would add sterile substances or substances from healthy people and animals to the cell culture. This, of course, to check whether it is not the method itself that yields or falsifies the results. These control experiments have never been carried out by the official “science” to this day. During the measles virus trial, I commissioned an independent laboratory to perform these control experiments and the result was that the tissues and cells die, due to the laboratory conditions, in the exact same way as when they come into contact with allegedly “infected” material. The entire purpose of control experiments is to exclude the possibility that it is the applied method or technique which may cause the result. Control experiments, then, are the highest duty in science and also the exclusive basis of claiming that one’s conclusion is scientific. During the measles virus trial it was the legally appointed expert – Dr. Podbielski, see further in this article – who stated that the papers which are crucial for the entire science of virology contain no control experiments. From this we can conclude that the respective scientists have been working extremely unscientifically, and this without even noticing it. This completely unscientific approach originated in June 1954, when an unscientific and refutable speculative article was published, according to which the death of tissue in a test tube was considered a possible evidence for the presence of a virus. Six months later, on 10 December 1954, the main author of this opinion was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for another equally speculative theory. The speculation from June 1954 was then raised to a scientific fact due to this distinction1 and became a dogma which has never been challenged to this date. Since June 1954, the death of tissue and cells in a test tube has been regarded as proof for the existence of a virus.” — Dr. Stefan Lanka

    Google: Wissenschafftplus Magazin The Virus Misconception, Part 1, Measles as an example [I, 01/2020 ed.]

    A comprehensive discussion on the virus fraud between Dr. Stefan Lanka and Dr. Tom Cowan…

    YouTube: Dr. Tom Cowan with Stefan Lanka about false virus theory

  4. jimells Avatar
    jimells

    I can’t see the video so I followed the link to “Putrino Lab Who We Are”.

    Now I’m confused, because that webpage clearly describes a consultant firm that hires out to “health technology startups”. Dr Putrino has a new book, but it’s not about Long Covid. Instead, it tells us “How to Make Money and Save Lives in the HealthTech World”.

    I worked as a computer consultant for many years and many of my clients were related to the medical industry. Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t think of any business consultant I’ve ever met that, you know, treated patients.

    So yeah, I’m very confused, even more than usual.

  5. David M Tuller Avatar
    David M Tuller

    Why can’t you watch the video? Is there some reason it’s not working for you? The discussion was mainly focused on Dr Putrino’s work with long Covid and his concerns that some argue the symptoms are psychogenic–not his high tech work, his research in that field, or projects he’s developing with business partners.

  6. jimells Avatar
    jimells

    Dr Tuller, the video doesn’t show up in my web browser, there is just white space, probably due to anti-tracking and anti-cookies settings in the browser.

    Words like “rehabilitation”, “physical therapist”, and “high tech start-up” trigger a very bad reaction in my cynical brain. Scams like Mahana Therapeutics, with their magic computerized CBT for gut problems, have given Dr Putrino’s industry a very bad reputation, at least in my mind.

    The “good guys” need to make a big effort to clean up their industry and drive out the Wessely School startups that are harming patients and scamming investors at the same time.

    (I once worked for a company whose only “product” was to have an IPO (initial stock offering) and whose only income was from investors.)

  7. Dredd Avatar
    Dredd

    Very informative. I watched every second carefully. Learned a lot. I think both David Putrino and David Tuller interacted in a way I could understand and totally agree with the subject matter. There are many areas where SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 are less than sufficiently known. Now there is talk of “A virus that shows no signs of disappearing” (NYT). My software research has run across some perplexing DNA/RNA data too (On The Origin Of The Home Of COVID-19 – 29).

    Thanks for the video interview.

  8. MP Avatar
    MP

    Brit here. PVFS in 1992. watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOJNPK7FIgk

  9. Dredd Avatar
    Dredd

    MP,

    That video is very instructive!

  10. Davidson Avatar
    Davidson

    Thank you for this great work using tech to see the breadth of PASC.
    Pernicious anemia groups have insight.
    #helpmechangethefuture
    *ADVANCED* B12 protocols should be considered urgently.
    CDC case #CDC-1232781-B4W6H4

  11. Dredd Avatar
    Dredd

    The ASM says this: “the data on this syndrome are, at best, murky” (Long COVID).

  12. MP Avatar
    MP

    Dredd

    Well Dr Tuller keep on psychobashing our UK scientists so I thought I would show you how good they are. WHy doesn’t Dr Tuller go and bash Dr Cheney and Peterson in Incline village for refusing to allow Dr Chia to do enterovirus testing on the ME cohort? wHy does he not investigate the claims of Dr Byron Hyde that ME is not CFS and it is an enterovirus infection and injury of the central nervous system? what about Dr Patterson in the united States who claims to have a diagnostic test for long covid and me cfs which is basically a cytokine profiling which has been done before. And he uses a HIV drug to treat to bring the cytokines down and says this improves patients. and this drug Marivorac costs 3000 usd. LOL