Author: David Tuller
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Once More Regarding Inflated FND Rates–and a Reprise of a Letter to a Yale Neurologist
Last July, I sent a letter to Benjamin Tolchin, a neurologist at Yale, about the statement, in a 2021 paper for which he was the lead author, regarding prevalence rates for functional neurological disorder (FND). Last month, I sent it again. I’ve still had no response. I am reposting it below because related claims about…
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A Response to Call for “A New Paradigm” for Long Covid in Lancet Respiratory Medicine
Update, Feb 3rd: After less than 24 hours, our letter was rejected by the journal. Here’s the message I received: Dear Dr Tuller, Thank you for your recent submission to The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. We have now had time to consider your manuscript and unfortunately, on this occasion, we have decided not to publish it because…
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My Article About the Life–and Preventable Death–of Maeve Boothby O’Neill
Last week, Codastory.com published an article I wrote about Maeve Boothby O’Neill, a 27-year-old in Exeter, England, who died in October, 2021, from complications of ME. The specific cause appears to have been malnutrition. Despite being alerted to the seriousness of Maeve’s condition, the local hospital resisted appeals to insert a feeding tube during her…
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Double Talk on Mind-Body “Dualism” in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research?
Proponents of the psychosomatic approach to ME and long Covid–as well as the broader range of so-called “functional” disorders and/or “medically unexplained symptoms”–routinely declare that those who disagree with them are engaging in what they dismissively refer to as mind-body “dualism.” The mind and body are not separate entities, they note, and drawing sharp distinctions…
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After Last Year’s Tub Talk, Here’s an Interview–Clothed–for #MEAction’s Podcast
The last time I was interviewed about my work, I was sitting in a bubble bath with the guy tossing questions at me. That was, of course, my appearance last April on Tub Talks with Damon, a web series in which my friend Damon Jacobs, a gay, sex-positive psychotherapist in New York City, conducts interviews…
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Why is the Department of Veterans Affairs Using a 1988 Definition of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?
Even though the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta is the country’s leading public health agency, other government entities are not always up-to-speed on the latest recommendations. That could explain why the Department of Veterans Affairs appears to be using a variation of the 1988 Holmes definition for chronic fatigue syndrome in…
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Usual Suspects Say NICE Made Eight Errors; Nonsense, Says Committee Member Adam Lowe
Update Jan 5, 2023: Martin Rücker, the German investigative journalist who posted the snippets from the draft article, touched base after seeing this post and assured me that the copy he received was not a formally embargoed version provided to reporters before publication. In other words, no embargo was broken, as I had assumed might…
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Can Functional Neurological Disorder Be an Indication of Prion Disease?
A recent article in the Journal of Neurology presents a twist on the issue of functional neurological disorder (FND). The article, which was published in September, is called “Functional neurological symptoms as initial presentation of Creutzfeldt‐Jakob disease: case series.” Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a prion disorder that leads to dementia and death, usually within months. But…
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A Stupid Study of Exercise for Long Covid Patients With Post-Exertional Symptom Exacerbation
The Journal of Medical Virology has just published a study called “Effect of using a structured pacing protocol on post-exertional symptom exacerbation and health status in a longitudinal cohort with the post-COVID-19 syndrome.” The investigators are from the University of Leeds and the Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust. Post-COVID-19 syndrome (PCS) is the name the…
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Is the Long Covid Phenomenon an Expression of “Psychosocial Distress”?
For the second time in a few weeks, a major US news organization has provided Professor Michael Sharpe, lead PACE investigator and one-time Virology Blog commenter, with a high-profile platform to disseminate his typical blather and nonsense. Both articles—the first in New York Magazine, the second in The New Republic–-have presented the long Covid phenomenon…
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Top Lightning Process Proponent Privately Lobbied for Approval of Norway’s LP Study
*Two corrections had been made in the text below. The NEM committee has 12 members, not nine, as I originally wrote. And when Dr Flottorp wrote her letter, it was not while the NEM committee was considering the proposed Lightning Process trial, as I originally wrote, but before it had progressed that far. The letter…
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Recent Articles in The Guardian, CNBC and Popular Science
As part of an ongoing project on long Covid, The Guardian recently published a powerful excerpt from a book called “What Doesn’t Kill Us Makes Us: Who We Become After Tragedy and Trauma.” The author, Mike Mariani, is an American journalist who a decade ago found himself smacked with a debilitating case of chronic fatigue…