BBC: Long Covid course [LP] is ‘exploiting people’, says ex-GB rower, 2024, article and radio program

Agree that the details are weird yet again. I almost never see testimonies like this, with those words and framing, especially "convinced she wouldn't recover". Somehow it's usually people who have something to sell.

Really furious at all the damn sickxploitation and how it's enabled by bad MDs and journalists. Even though I've become a very cynical person, I couldn't imagine when COVID was spreading in 2020 and LC became obvious that nothing would change from it. It's disgusting.

 

That might be worth adding a link in resources? It looks like a pretty good and up-to-date run down.

 

ahhh sorry... was it you @SNT Gatchaman ? biopsychosauruses?

 

Guilty Also it has the benefit of an ideal homophone*, available for use when BPS are whinging about it all being so unfair for people to expect high quality evidence and actual science.

Spoiler

Biopsycho-sore-asses

---
* As featured in many a dad joke.

 

Too tired to extract quotes, but the canary just dropped a banger on the Lightning Process — https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2024/05/23/lightning-process-long-covid/

 

Spot on

 

Thanks for that @Yann04 ! We need some hard hitting journalism like this. Steve Topple doesn't mince his words:

'The BBC has exposed how an insidious group of predatory charlatans have been gaslighting long Covid patients. It revolves around a pseudoscientific treatment known as the ‘Lightning Process’.

It would be shocking, were it not for the experience of those with another post-viral disease. This is because it isn’t the first time these quack practitioners have scammed vulnerable patients. The reality is, they’ve been grifting off of the devastation myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) has caused to the lives of the millions who live with it for years.'

.

 

Thanks, I’ve been saying it!

 

I have been keeping an eye out for other LP articles to see how Phil Parker responds and saw this one from Scotland. It is not great as it makes him seem reasonable. Again it is missing the significant harm angle.
https://glasgowstandard.com/2024/05...at-is-it-and-can-it-help-long-covid-patients/

 

Did they not advertise for a new communications manager recently ? ( I could well be mistaken, but that might account for it)

 

The author is a Journalism student

https://www.facebook.com/p/Ethan-Paterson-100009743711552/?locale=zh_TW

The website says Glasgow Uni at the bottom.

The 'Glasgow Standard' invented I guess as a way of their students practising writing articles. I don't think it is a 'real' newspaper.

 

Good one.

Seems relevant to point out that in what I hoped would be a thread documenting silly antics that would soon die off, the very first MD I noticed denying against Long Covid was Henrik Vogt, of LP fame.

I have no doubt that in some places, most likely Norway, thousands of people have already been subjected to it, they went at it right from the start. Any good scammer will jump on a good opportunity. If anyone were to look into it, I'm sure we'd find plenty, but it's not as if this is any different than the CBT+GET paradigm that was quickly established as, and remains, the norm even though it obviously doesn't work.

 

Glasgow Standard Twitter

https://twitter.com/user/status/1793666503558279358



Tweet Content

'Those suffering from Long Covid have few options to get help for their condition. Some, however, have turned to the Lightning Process, created by Dr Phil Parker.
@Ethan_1908 writes about what the process is, who it has helped, and what the critiques are:
https://glasgowstandard.com/2024/05...at-is-it-and-can-it-help-long-covid-patients/

.

 

The Glasgow Standard (journalism student paper) interviewed Ewan Dale, ME Association Trustee, for a counter statement to the numerous quotes from Phil Parker.


'Ewan Dale, a spokesperson for the Association, detailed their issues with the process.

“We are aware of the possibilities of illness behaviour and the power of positive thinking, but unfortunately, we continue to see that those who prefer such aspects of approaches to so many of the unknowns and uncertainties in medical practice tend to fail to start addressing investigating the possibilities in a medically balanced and incisive manner,” he said.'
https://glasgowstandard.com/2024/05...at-is-it-and-can-it-help-long-covid-patients/



Well, that's clear as mud. Perhaps Ewan said other things which the student journalist didn't quote. But all the same, compared with Parker's slick marketing schpeel, Ewan's statement is wordy, lame and Useless in countering Lightning. Doesn't the MEA have pre-prepared statements on what's wrong with Lightning?

If not why not??

For a start Phil Parker calls a disabling disease "an issue". Any comment on that, MEA? Apparently not.

The MEA have let us down AGAIN.



This article, while obviously not in the national press, does illustrate the journalism tendency to present Phil Parker's viewpoint as the primary and established viewpoint, and Lightning as an established treatment for ME - and so the criticism of Parker's viewpoint and Lightning are framed as challenging established facts. I think Brian Hughes points out that's called 'Anchoring'.

.