Daily Mail: EXCLUSIVE: Barely able to leave the house, told they are exaggerating and even that their ailment does not exist: Three ME patients reveal

Rob Howard copies Sir Simon's chumminess and then shows again he doesn't know what he is talking about.

Code:

https://twitter.com/ProfRobHoward/status/1235490560875597825

https://twitter.com/user/status/1235490560875597825

 

have just seen this:
"Definition of 'myalgic encephalopathy'
Also called: chronic fatigue syndrome. Abbreviation: ME. Formerly called: myalgic encephalomyelitis"

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/d...P0uQ0_UUDobLQLxUk98NvBjfzpL7rW-YZHM0A0Xjvq_9Q

maybe someone could let them know that it is still Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (see WHO )

We welcome feedback or enquiries regarding this website; please email enquiries@collinsdictionary.com

 

ME Association have been using "encephalopathy" since 2010, apparently: https://www.meassociation.org.uk/20...yalgic-encephalopathy-on-the-new-mea-website/

But CS acknowledges that "it hasn't achieved any sort of widespread acceptance..." https://www.meassociation.org.uk/about-what-is-mecfs/

 

I thought CS and the MEA proposed changing the name around 2002, give or take a year or two.

However one tries to make sense of that remark of Holgate's, one can't. There could have been a mistake in transcription, but that would still not account for a belief that CFS preceded ME.

 

We know more than anyone that the way to play that hand is to pace. Yet by different ways to play the hand he only means GET and CBT which have been objectively proven to fail by even his own trials.

So some ONE could improve potentially due to the thing they did at the time administered by himself or his colleagues. Not even proof that the thing they did caused the claimed improvement.

Notice he doesn't claim recovery or cure either in that statement. Yet he thinks its admirable that he spent years developing failed treatments that the best statement he can make after 30 years is "when someone improves".

He also claims he/they devoted years testing and developing new approaches. That's false. They just implemented CBT and GET on a failed premise from day one.

Lets say they initially gave it five years to see if it worked thats six sets of five years wasted when the data always proved it was nonsense from day one.

 

I took that to mean, when someone produces a new (and improved) approach to treatment, rather than someone showing an improvement in their condition on his txs.

Their use of language around this really is a minefield.

 

Good thread from John:
https://twitter.com/user/status/1235317452512296961

https://twitter.com/user/status/1235317772164435968

https://twitter.com/user/status/1235317956013420547

https://twitter.com/user/status/1235318121273208832

https://twitter.com/user/status/1235318267985747972

 

Never mind the typos-

Brilliant! In all the arguments over the years this is the first time I've heard this one and it is absolutely spot on.

 

Ah, I think your interpretation is probably correct.

 

awesome @JohnTheJack how very level headed, calm, & cutting straight to the point! thank you so much.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1234589046762082305


This is a good line of argument. Rather than trying to argue that ME is a 'physical illness' in these debates, we should be asking these charlatans for proof that it is a psychological illness.

The fact is, that ME/CFS has been in the hands of the psychiatrists since the 1980s and they have not published a single shred of evidence that proves that ME is psychological. Moreover, when you take a proper look at the data from their (flawed) trials, their chosen psychological treatments do not work. This is damning enough.

We should not have to prove that ME is physical. The onus is on the psychiatrists to prove that ME is psychological. It is time for them to put up or shut up.

 

'Psychological' is not really the important word here. It is 'Psychogenic', or maybe more accurately 'Psycho-perpetuated'.

'Psychological' is rather vague; it could be used to mean anything between a strong assertion of psychogenesis/psychoperpetuation, to a weaker observation of 'the mind is significantly affected'. As such it is ripe for the typical equivocation by BPS goofballs.

For example, Alzheimer's is a psychological disease (among other things) that is certainly not psychogenic/perpetuated. ME/CFS has psychological features such as cognitive impairment and increased rates of depression/anxiety.

As pointed out, the model in PACE is the 'illness beliefs' model which is definitively in the 'psychoperpetuation' category. In this model one would expect improvement in function to correlate with 'improvement' in beliefs, including self-ratings. This was the opposite of what was seen in PACE - people's beliefs 'improved', but they did not. So the psychogenic/psychoperpetuated model was definitively rendered extremely implausible by PACE.

 

I'd disagree with parts of this. Brainfog isn't psychological, strictly speaking; it's neurological or neurocognitive. At a push, you might call it neuropsychological, but that means something different to psychological.

Alzheimer's is a neurodegenerative disease with some psychological effects: https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/alzheimers/what-is-alzheimers-disease and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alzheimer's_disease At a push, some people call it neuropsychiatric but that's still up for debate.

 

Psychological can quite fairly mean as little as 'relating to the mind' or 'affecting the mind'.

Alzheimer's entails much more than "some psychological effects". You literally lose your mind. Of course the cause is neuro-something.

Brainfog profoundly reduces mental abilities. Perhaps favored terminology is 'neurocognitive' but I have no problem calling it a salient psychological feature.

The point is that 'psychological' is a vague term that affords all sorts of opportunities for slipperiness in arguments.