Category: ME/CFS

*The headline has been changed to indicate that Cochrane has decided to withdraw the review but had not yet done so at time of posting. Cochrane has decided to withdraw, at least for now, its fatally flawed review of exercise treatments for ME/CFS—or CFS, as the review calls the illness. This review, which reported that…

*Please see note at end of post After I posted yesterday’s blog about Per Fink’s upcoming appearance at the fourth annual Columbia Psychosomatic Conference being held this weekend, I received the following e-mail from Columbia’s Alla Landa. She is an assistant professor of “clinical psychology in psychiatry”–whatever that means–and director of the conference. I found…

Someone uninformed or stupid or maybe both decided to invite Danish physician Per Fink to present at a conference on so-called psychosomatic medicine being held this weekend at Columbia University. Fink—I won’t dignify him by using an honorific–is a scary guy. He should never have been provided with this prestigious platform—in my home town, no…

Since 2008, the English arm of the National Health Service has been rolling out a program called Improving Access to Psychological Therapies, or IAPT. More than 900,000 people now receive IAPT services annually. This program arose out of the notion that many people were suffering from untreated depression, anxiety and other psychiatric disorders, and that a…

I sent the following e-mail today to Dr Nick Brown, the editor-in-chief of Archives of Disease in Childhood, the journal that published the Lightning Process study a year ago. I cc’d Dr Fiona Godlee, editorial director of BMJ, which publishes Archives. Dear Dr Brown— As you know, I have been requesting since January that Archives…

So I attended the CFS/ME Research Collaborative conference two weeks ago in Bristol. The two-day event was a refreshingly PACE-free zone–as far as I could tell, I was the only person who mentioned that piece of crap in public comments. (Although I wasn’t on the schedule, CMRC vice chair Chris Ponting, a professor of genetics…

Last week, more than three dozen advocates for people with chronic illnesses signed an open letter to Netflix protesting Afflicted, a multi-part documentary. The open letter was posted on Medium. I have posted it below. (I have added my name to the list of signatories; I meant to sign on beforehand but forget to inform…

When I first began examining the PACE trial in detail, I turned to clinical trial experts to vet my concerns. One of them was biostatistician Bruce Levin, a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, to whom I was referred by a mutual colleague. After he reviewed the trial, he pronounced it to…

I’ll be in Bristol later this week for the CFS/ME Research Collaborative’s annual conference. I was not welcome last year, since I was at that point engaged in harshly criticizing the organization for its unwillingness to acknowledge that its deputy chair had falsely accused me of libel. This year, things have changed and both the…

Cochrane–formerly called the Cochrane Collaboration–is respected worldwide for its systematic reviews of medical treatments. These reviews are often cited as the definitive source of information about treatment efficacy and safety. In taking on the thankless task of assessing the data on commonly used interventions, Cochrane performs an invaluable public health service and has advanced the…

Jonathan Edwards, an emeritus professor of medicine at University College London, recently sent a letter to Professor Fiona Watt, executive chairwoman of the UK Medical Research Council. The MRC was the main funder of PACE and has continued to defend the trial and its conduct. In recent years, Professor Edwards has been very involved in…