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That makes sense. I'd assume that a similar percentage in the rituximab group (~19%) would have adverse effects for the same reason, leaving 7% (or more, due to overlap) to other causes.

I'm curious about the 18.9% in the placebo group that had "serious adverse events." Would this be the so-called "nocebo" effect, and can that actually produce serious adverse events? Or might these events have been part of the disease process itself and unrelated to the study?

There were a few times, maybe 4 or 5 times, in the first couple of years of illness that my otherwise constant dizziness either let up entirely or was greatly reduced. Unfortunately, this never lasted for more than 15-30 minutes. I recall feeling generally "better" during these brief periods...

Reading articles like this, which principally equate the disease with "fatigue," makes me wonder if we might not be better off if the disease was called something like "Persistent Physiologic Malaise Syndrome," or even "Persistent Somatic Malaise Syndrome." Not that "malaise" doesn't have its...

Dr. Nath understandably does not want to discuss any findings yet. My impression is that they don't even want to analyze the data at this stage. Still, I'd love to ask him, "So, given what you've seen so far, what do you think of the deconditioning hypothesis?"

Now that I look at it again, it is not completely clear that they are screening out everyone with an autoimmune disorder, but they might be. I wonder how stringent they are in this regard. For instance, scalp psoriasis is no doubt autoimmune in nature, but it can be relatively mild in some...

It couldn't be that people with a primarily physical illness have a stronger belief in a solely physical cause than people who do not have a primarily physical illness, and that the real problem is that the case definition being used simply can't differentiate between the two groups... could it...

I do wonder about the exclusion of all autoimmune disorders, though. I believe Dr. Hanson and others have found similarities in the makeup of the mircobiome between some ME/CFS patients and patients with Crohn's disease and chronic ulcerative colitis, both of which are believed to be autoimmune...

Wait... that can't be right. We have it on the highest authority that...

Yeah, I remember people calling it "The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" around 1987. I have a feeling it may have been due to the subconscious influence of the 1979 movie "The China Syndrome." The Chernobyl disaster happened in 1986, so the 1979 movie was probably being referenced a lot around that time.

It's interesting to contrast his bristling at criticism with what Ron Davis said at the start of his presentation on the first day that he talked in Australia. I'm paraphrasing here because I failed to record it, but the gist was that it is the job of a scientist to get up everyday and try to...

Since he uses the word "campaign" 8 times in the course of one short interview, I wonder in how many other public forums he will vigorously speak out against... uh, "campaigning."

As I recall, Ron Davis simply presented the results, without really characterizing them in any way (as, say, a "null result"). The results of both groups appeared similar. If he intended to convey anything else, then I did not grasp it.

When I first read this, I took "bathing" literally. :)

I saw that part of Dr. Davis' talk, also. IIRC, I believe he said that his son feels better when "he has a fever" - so it may be any kind of fever. Your idea that the energy production necessary to produce a fever may be able to temporarily override a presumed hypometabolic state is very...

He spoke about it in his talk at the beginning of Day 2. He also showed a couple of slides related to the T-cell study. I did not see it "live," but a recording of the entire day seemed to be up on the site for a while. The next day, it seemed like only the afternoon portion of that recording...

Well, the Wikipedia article on the New York Post says: This 1983 headline is fairly infamous:

I think I saw most of Dr. Davis speech at the start of the second day. I lost the feed when he started to recap about the nano-needle and I couldn't get back. The news that was unknown to me (at least) was that the T-cell clonal expansion that had been seen in 4 ME patients turned out to also...

“What a terrible injustice! - - Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of some 17-24 million little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world when a couple BPS researchers' feelings are being hurt. Someday you'll understand that."...

I'm guessing that the talk by Dr. Cara Tomas was embargoed, since the feed went to "We'll Be Back Soon" just as she was being introduced - unless it's just me. ETA: Now it says "We are sorry that this presentation cannot be shared" - so, yes, embargoed.