Month: April 2025
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Null Results in Physiotherapy Trial for Functional Motor Disorder
It must be tough for investigators when a major study seeking to assess the effectiveness of an intervention for a challenging condition yields null results. That’s what happened in 2019 with a trial of rituximab for ME/CFS, published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Findings from earlier research had suggested that rituximab, a drug used to…
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New Zealand GP Group Disavows Lightning Process Endorsement; BBC’s Con or Cure Takes Skeptical Look at LP
“A small step in New Zealand” Sometimes there is modest good news. In this case, the good news is all due to the diligent efforts of Nina Steinkopf, who writes the always useful blog MElife (MElivet). Steinkopf, who was diagnosed with ME in 2010, mostly covers goings-on in Norway and across Scandinavia. That means she…
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My Visits with Alem Matthees, 2025
In 2018, I spent six weeks in Australia, visiting multiple cities on a kind of “chronic fatigue” tour around the country. (In Australia, doctors and patients more often than not referred to the cluster of overlapping illnesses now generally being called ME/CFS as simply “chronic fatigue.”) Near the end, I spent five days in Perth.…
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A 2015 Letter from the Countess of Mar to Suzanne O’Sullivan
Before she retired from the House of Lords a few years ago, the Countess of Mar was a steadfast supporter of people with ME/CFS. When neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan, a champion of psychosomatic explanations for unexplained symptoms, published her first book in 2015—“It’s All in Your Head: True Stories of Imaginary Illness”–the Countess sent her a…
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Suzanne O’Sullivan’s “Psychosomatic” Mis-Diagnoses
Neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan has been conducting a media blitz for her new book, “The Age of Diagnosis: How Our Obsession with Medical Labels Is Making Us Sicker.” The Guardian ran a lengthy excerpt in early March. O’Sullivan appeared on the popular podcast Freakonomics. Multiple publications have published profiles of her, with credulous assessments of her…
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Some Things I’ve Read Recently…
Lisa McCorkell leaves Patient-Led Research Collaborative after five years… Way back in 2020, when it became clear that some people were experiencing prolonged symptoms after an acute bout of COVID-19, Lisa McCorkell helped found the Patient-Led Research Collaborative (PLRC). The organization grew out of an online health-related support group, which published the first survey on…
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Lancet Letter Exchange on Claimed Success of “Persistent Physical Symptoms” Trial Despite Clinically Insignificant Findings
Last year, The Lancet published a paper from Christopher Burton and colleagues called “Effectiveness of a symptom-clinic intervention delivered by general practitioners with an extended role for people with multiple and persistent physical symptoms in England: the Multiple Symptoms Study 3 pragmatic, multicentre, parallel-group, individually randomised controlled trial.” Per the norm for research on psycho-behavioral…