By David Tuller, DrPH
On Tuesday, I gave a presentation at the Kirby Institute, a renowned research center at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, along with my friend and colleague Dr David Joffe, a respiratory medicine specialist. David spoke about the pathophysiology of Long Covid as well as the enormous economic burden of the disease. I spoke about the problems with the clinical trials of psycho-behavioral interventions—specifically, the infamous PACE trial for ME/CFS and the recent REGAIN trial for Long Covid.
Time was short, and we both only had 20 minutes, so I had to rush through the last part of my talk. But I think overall it went pretty well. Although I get agitated every time I talk about this body of crap research, I managed to restrain myself from referring to PACE as “this fucking trial.” Nor did I repeat my signature act of academic performance art—ripping up a copy of the PACE trial into shreds and tossing them in the air. Still, I think my perspective came through pretty clearly.