Opinion Chronic fatigue syndromes: real illnesses that people can recover from, 2023, The Oslo Chronic Fatigue Consortium

Ugh, the whole thing is a manipulating, dishonest smear-piece meant to portray this movement as rational, helpful people who are the poor victims of Very Bad People (in order to silence just criticism as unwarranted hostility), instead of the failed mind-over-body ideological crapfest it is, but to further look at just this sentence beyond Sean's excellent comment on it above:

Note the language. "A trench warfare began" like it fell out of thin air, something that just happened.(Also note e.g. the use of the words "trench warfare" and the vaguely defined "individuals" and "others".)
Also note how these words and this sentence enforce the frame of an ongoing "controversy"
(Rule#1 in construct agnotology: create a controversy and keep it alive so bad activities/products can still be pushed because of the appearance of ongoing scientific uncertainty), and how this sentence follows the usual depiction of regular medicine as limited and closeminded pitted against the suggested openmindedness and superiority of a mind-over-body approach.

And of course the "others" did not just "want to involve the brain and behaviour to a greater extent" - the "to a greater extent" would still be unwarranted, but this is a motte-and-bailey argument that still can't resist to stick in quite some motte: brain and behaviour were claimed as the primary reasons for sickness and disability and the focus points for effective treatment.

 

Absolutely

Claim (Me et al where I make the same claim unsubstantiated, year) (My buddy et al who make the same claim substantiating it with a reference to me et al, year.)

 

I think it’d be helpful to have examples of this tactic to cite from the history of science (of researchers portraying themselves as dispassionate investigators of a common-sense hypothesis while the group they’re studying, who object to their work and its harms, are doing so because they’re mad/violent). I wonder if this is something ME/CFS Skeptic has encountered in their research on the history of psychosomatic medicine—surely you could find this tactic repeated whenever now-vindicated people dared to protest their dehumanization by Science.

 

A member of the Oslo Consortium seems to have made some seriously worrying changes to Region Stockholm's guidelines for ME/CFS.

@MittEremltage has blogged about it here:

Region Stockholm uppdaterar vårdprogram för ME med ovetenskapliga påståenden om KBT och gradvis utökad aktivitet
https://mitteremitage.wordpress.com...staenden-om-kbt-och-gradvis-utokad-aktivitet/

Genomgång av ändringar i vårdprogram för ME i viss.nu
https://mitteremitage.wordpress.com...-av-andringar-i-vardprogram-for-me-i-viss-nu/

(I posted about this in the News from Scandinavia thread earlier today, but wanted to mention it on this thread as well because I'm not sure how many of those who are interested in the Olso Consortium are reading that thread.)

 

An update today:

Viss.nu har gjort vissa ändringar
https://mitteremitage.wordpress.com/2024/07/06/viss-nu-har-gjort-vissa-andringar/

(Posted in the News from Scandinavia thread too, with auto-translated quotes.)

 

I've started a new thread for Elin Lindsäter's related research study (currently recruiting):

https://www.s4me.info/threads/swede...ue-a-feasibility-study-lindsäter-et-al.39238/

 

I've started a new thread for the changes to Region Stockholm's guidelines for ME:

Sweden: Problematic changes to Region Stockholm's ME/CFS guidelines
https://www.s4me.info/threads/swede...to-region-stockholms-me-cfs-guidelines.39260/

 

An article by Jörgen Malmquist in SFAM's journal AllmänMedicin, issue 3-2024.

("SFAM, the Swedish Association of General Practice, is the professional and scientific college of general practitioners (family physicians) in Sweden, a non-profit organisation with about 2000 members. SFAM is affiliated to the Swedish Society of Medicine (Svenska Läkaresällskapet) as well as the Swedish Medical Association (Läkarförbundet). Main areas of interest for SFAM are continuing professional development, training of future GPs, assessment of competence, quality improvement and research in general practice/family medicine.")

Hur ska vi tänka när vi möter patienter med långvariga trötthetstillstånd?
https://allmanmedicin.sfam.se/p/all...riga-trotthetstillstand/1919/1587765/57081593

 

It all sounds like the unscientific media centre playbook. A playbook that seems to get more and more traction.

A web of unscience, politics, media that seems very powerful and connected.

We need charities that can stand up to that power, however they seem connected in this web or are underfunded or understaffed.

We need powerful people in politics, media and science on our side, we need lobbying we need big campaigns to inform people.

 

"Webster's dictionary defines the word cringe as" you know what it doesn't matter but damn is this cringe-worthy meandering drivel.

This is beyond death of expertise and firmly into death of reason. And of basic attachment to facts. They are basically pretending that this is a new approach, when many of the people involved in this have literally been creating and promoting widespread adoption of this exact same thing, which millions have been subjected to for decades. Why make such an obvious blatant lie? When they could instead say this has been the standard of care for decades?

This coming from an authoritative body of medical professionals is basically a 5 alarm warning sign that medicine is losing grips with reality and even the authoritative bodies have just stopped bothering to make sense. It's as absurd as some cultural conservative activists talking about the never-before-tried idea of criminalizing drug use and traffic because the current free-for-all drugs-available-to-everyone approach has failed. It's beyond absurd, it's batshit insane.

And apparently completely oblivious, or covering up, Long Covid and how it is behind the increase in some countries, with the difference simply being that some countries just don't allow ME/CFS to be diagnosed.

They are talking about a massive increase in diagnoses, and refer to RecoveryNorway's credible (really?) record of recoveries. There are 84. Out of something like several thousands. This includes a few oddballs like Garner's and Landmark's. This stuff should be target of mockery from professionals as much as flat Earth and weather control through electromagnetic waves.

How the hell are people supposed to trust GPs when they say credible things if they choose to spew complete nonsense like this? When you can't tell if someone is telling the truth or bullshitting you? Which is pretty much rule #1 for experts: do not bullshit, do not lie or make stuff up, because the next time you speak people will treat it with suspicion, and rightly so.

AI medicine can't come soon enough. Humans are too faillible to be trusted with the lives of complete strangers. Even the famous AI hallucinations aren't nearly as bad as this nonsense.

 

I have contacted the editor-in-chief and the responsible publisher about the article.

More about it in this blog post (Google translated):
https://mitteremitage-wordpress-com..._sl=sv&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=sv&_x_tr_pto=wapp