Trial By Error, by David Tuller
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More of the Same Old Nonsense from the “Oslo Chronic Fatigue Consortium”
It is extremely dispiriting to have to respond to yet another wail of desperation from psychologizing dead-enders who have lost control of the narrative over the nature and treatment of ME/CFS and long Covid. This most recent screed, published last month in the Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care, has been written by a group…
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Norwegian Lightning Process Trial Ejects Questioning Participant
The administrators of a controversial study of the Lightning Process currently being conducted in Norway have ejected a participant who expressed critical views about the biopsychosocial approach to ME, according to MELivet [MELife], Nina Steinkopf’s invaluable blog. This decision appears to be an acknowledgement that the intervention only works if you believe it will work.…
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Celine Corsius–In Memorium
Céline Corsius, a 32-year-old from the Netherlands, died through euthanasia on September 18th after suffering with ME for 22 years. For the last seven years, she was confined to her bed, lying in the dark. Even so, her health situation continued to deteriorate. She was cared for by her parents, Iselle and Lou Corsius. Below…
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David Putrino on New Nature Study of Long Covid Immune Profiling
I’ve posted two past interviews with David Putrino (here and here) about long Covid, ME/CFS, and related issues. Dr Putrino, a neuroscientist and physical therapist, is director of rehabilitation innovation at the Mt Sinai Health System in New York. Early in the pandemic, he began seeing patients with prolonged symptoms following acute bouts of Covid-19.…
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Media Notes–Hasan Presses Fauci on Long Covid; Rehmeyer on Psych Diagnoses; Washington Post Explores Backstory of Recent Study
MSNBC anchor Mehdi Hasan can be a bulldog as an interviewer. He recently pressed Dr Anthony Fauci on the US government’s flat-footed response to the wave of long Covid cases. Dr Fauci came across as somewhat on the defensive and acknowledged that progress has been slow. He agreed that clinical trials to assess possible treatments…
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An Interview with Yale’s Akiko Iwasaki
Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology at the Yale School of Medicine, is a leading investigator into long Covid and has recently been tapped to lead a new Center for Infection & Immunity. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018, the National Academy of Medicine in 2019, to and the American…
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A Physiotherapist’s Guide to Understanding and Managing ME/CFS
A new book, A Physiotherapist’s Guide to Understanding and Managing ME/CFS, has arrived at a timely moment. With so many long Covid patients being diagnosed with ME or ME/CFS, it is essential that physiotherapists—or physical therapists, in the US—grasp the essentials of the disease, and in particular the existence of post-exertional malaise (PEM). The book,…
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My Talk at Cambridge Last October on “Epidemiological Sleight-of-Hand: The Troubling Case of ‘Medically Unexplained Symptoms’”
I gave a talk at Cambridge University last October called “Epidemiological Sleight-of-Hand: The Troubling Case of ‘Medically Unexplained Symptoms.’” More accurately, I gave the same talk on two successive days—October 18th and 19th–because of video malfunctions on the first day. I thought I’d written a post about it, but when I searched recently, I couldn’t…
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Interview with Journalist Betsy Ladyzhets about NIH’s Flawed $1.2 Billion RECOVER Program for Long Covid
Betsy Ladyzhets is an independent health, science and data journalist who has been covering the coronavirus pandemic, including long Covid. While serving as a journalism fellow at MuckRock, she co-wrote an investigative report for STAT, a well-known health and medical news site, about the US National Institutes of Health’s problem-plagued $1.2 billion long Covid program,…
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Letter to Journal about Inflated Claims of FND Prevalence
I have spent some time trying to correct the record on the reported prevalence of functional neurological disorder (FND). As I have documented, leaders of the FND field have spent the last decade misrepresenting the findings of a seminal 2010 study, Stone et al, to claim that this diagnosis is the second-most-common presentation at outpatient…
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Call for Retraction of Cochrane Review from Science For ME; Overview of Viral Persistence in Long Covid; Senators United on Long Covid
Sometimes I just like to post about a few things that have caught my interest, for whatever reason. I keep meaning to do this more regularly. Science For ME calls on Cochrane to retract flawed exercise review The Science for ME (S4ME) forum has posted a petition on change.org requesting that Cochrane withdraw its “harmful”…
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Just the Latest Gibberish from Professor Chalder
I’ve said it before and will undoubtedly say it again. Trudie Chalder, King’s College London’s mathematically and factually challenged professor of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), is a one-trick pony. She writes what is essentially the same bad paper based on the same unfounded assumptions over and over again. Her apparent professional success represents, at least…