Trial By Error, by David Tuller
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An Interview with Meghan O’Rourke, Author of The Invisible Kingdom (Reprise)
Last April, I interviewed poet, journalist and editor Meghan O’Rourke about The Invisible Kingdom, her insightful and affecting memoir of living with chronic illness. The book, a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Award, has just been issued in paperback. So I figured I’d re-post the interview. As the book recounts, O’Rourke initially…
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After Maeve Boothby O’Neill’s Death, More Concerns About Severe ME Patients at NHS Hospitals
I recently wrote an article for Codastory.com about Maeve Boothby O’Neill, who died from complications of severe ME in October, 2021, after three separate admissions to her local National Health Service hospital in Exeter, England. During her hospital stays, she and her family fought with the hospital over the need for tube-feeding or an alternate…
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An Upcoming “Biopsychosocial” Long Covid Conference in Finland
What is it with the health care establishments in northern Europe? Why are they so devoted to non-evidence-based approaches to treating serious medical conditions? Why do they trust arguably fraudulent research, like the PACE trial and Professor Esther Crawley’s pediatric Lightning Process study? Why are the authors of these studies respected and even esteemed among…
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Correctives from Putrino & Iwasaki (and Others) to the Long-Covid-Is-Psychosomatic Claims
When the pandemic began, everyone involved in the ME, CFS, and ME/CFS domain assumed that there would be a wave of post-acute, prolonged complications, since every virus seems to leave in its wake a small but still significant number of people who report a range of non-specific symptoms. It was also widely predicted that many…
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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…