News from Aotearoa/New Zealand and the Pacific Islands

Donation page for Prof Tate's team has been updated with their 2025 projects

https://alumni.otago.ac.nz/donate/myalgic-encephalomyelitis

 

ANZMES petition to NZ government: Fairness for the Hospitalised: Stop Benefit Cuts After 13 Weeks

https://our.actionstation.org.nz/pe...hospitalised-stop-benefit-cuts-after-13-weeks

 

Thanks to Nina E. Steinkopf the Lightning Process has now been removed as a topic endorsed by the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners.

https://melivet.com/2025/04/08/a-small-step-in-new-zealand/

 

Great news.

 

@Hutan she writes that she got a reply in a few hours, so it might be that her request landed on the desk of someone else than the people that have allowed Arroll to promote LP?

 

I believe Nina also usually shares her letters and the responses, so I wonder if it means anything that she didn’t this time?

 

Nina has updated her article with the email.

https://melivet.com/2025/04/08/a-small-step-in-new-zealand/

 

The response has been there since at least yesterday. Her initial email has not been shows as of yet.

 

There is now a link to the email in the article

https://melivet.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/email.pdf

 

Thanks, I didn’t spot the tiny blue link.

 

It seems to be the exact same text that she sent to Dr. Raman Kumar at the editorial office of the journal that published the ‘audit’. The text highlighted how it wasn’t an audit at all.

Which makes it possible that they withdrew their endorsement based on this flaw rather than that topic of LP.

 

I do wonder what is going on behind the closed doors of the RNZCGP....

Many members follow the NICE guidelines (eg my GP is the clinical director of about 20 GPs for her primary health care clinic and we have discussed briefly my concerns about the CME conference and Bruce's promotion of LP). Whether complaints from ME clients about him filter through to the college is unclear. Advocates here write letters of complaints and we have a doctor based at the Wellington, University of Otago, Department of General Practice who does good education based on the NICE guidelines. This department seems very different to the University of Auckland which is now collaborating publicly with it's Dept of Psychological Medicine (which has a long history of promoting psychosomatic theories for ME and other illnesses.

Nina's letter and the RNZCGP's response is the first time I have seen them show some sort of repudiation of Bruce's work. But I doubt NZ Doctor will publicly state they have removed the CME credits and why...
(NZ Doctor is not a medical journal or newsletter produced by the RNZCGP. It is a subscription based publication written by a team of journalists for primary health care providers and has also interviewed Mel Abbott in the past promoting her LP derived "neuroplasticity" scam treatment for ME/CFS - The Switch.)

I know wonder if RNZCGP are pushing back on Bruce by removing the CME points and I wonder if that will also mean they will no longer support his promotion of LP at the CME conferences he runs out of his Goodfellow Unit at Auckland University. I am hoping they are aware they have a Professor of General Practice down the LP rabbit hole (well, two, if you count Mel's efforts on the one in Dunedin...)

 

Blog from David Tuller (16/04/25) on the RNZCGP / NZ Doctor / Bruce Arroll LP for LC Study

https://virology.ws/2025/04/16/tria...-bbcs-con-or-cure-takes-skeptical-look-at-lp/