Paul Garner on Long Covid and ME/CFS - BMJ articles and other media.

Yeah I don’t think it’s because that’s when the advertising standard agency’s might step in, or risk of legal liability increases, I think it’s more nuanced and complex than that. In fact it would be reductionist and dualistic thinking to suggest otherwise.

 

Umm me too @JemPD

And all your points above. Have they not thought of these?

I think they probably have, and there is some mysterious motivational factor to account for why they just decided to go ahead and attempt to profit from this -real but also not real- framework anyhow.

A complete mystery

 

I don't see how it's any different from the mainstream CBT-for-deconditioning-slash-illness-beliefs stuff. The only difference is the language, and barely at that. The substance is the exact same, and so is the message. There's plenty of it in the past that is just as bad.

There used to be a slim veil of academic language to it, but it was always clearly for effect and used with purpose to mislead. The literature is filled with awareness that the patients reject it all and recommendations to use pseudoscientific language to hide it. A distinction without a difference for this particular programme.

 

I was wondering if we should just welcome the fact that they'd found a home for the faithful & that hopefully they'd stick to talking to (their) faithful. Tad annoyed that they're looking for donations --- could that be enough to report them to the police?

Jonathan's post here comes to mind --- we could just keep repeating NICE --- "low or very low quality evidence"
https://www.s4me.info/threads/chron...c-fatigue-consortium.35388/page-3#post-495402

 

and doesn’t square with the rate of people dumped into CFS bucket who were misdiagnosed and eventually are confirmed as having on those conditions listed. If they are allowed past the ‘no investigations it only encourages them’ nonsense of the old guidelines after they’ve been checked fir the basics (if they ever were)

 

Yip and I find it frustrating that rather than running studies with objective outcome criteria [seems you can barely go to the park without bumping into someone with a FitBit], i.e. to objectively assess the intervention, they just make up the results - what's the point of doing science like that? OK there are reasons to do "science like that"---.

 

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This post has been copied and following discussion moved from Opinion: ‘You don’t want to get better’: the outdated treatment of ME/CFS patients is a national scandal - George Monbiot
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If he has any wisdom at all Paul Garner should be reflecting that he doesn’t know his BPS bedfellows as well as he thinks he does. Sometimes the barrel of a gun looks a lot like a Guardian news article.

I’m very grateful for all the work recently and over the years that has made it possible for George Monbiot to take this on.

 

Post copied from the George Monbiot thread

This post has also been copied to a thread 'Curable' mind-brain training app and ME/CFS, including the role of Fiona Symington


I see the letter was from both Fiona Symington, who developed ME after living with EDS and chronic pain and then was “cured” of ME and pain, and Paul Garner, who presumably was cured of Long Covid.

So is Garner no longer claiming Lightening Therapy cured his ME/CFS?

Fiona Symington
https://archive.ph/8iMwK

 

I don't think Garner ever claimed he was cured by the Lightning Process. He preferred to spend his money on scuba diving holidays. He seems to have bee cured by a mysterious phone call from a psychiatrist friend in the USA if I remember rightly. Although there was something about contacting some nice people in Norway as well I think.

Ah yes, he remembers it well!

 

It seemed pretty clear but he never stated it publicly. He said he was cured after speaking by phone and consulting with a PhD candidate from Norway, who presumably couled have been or was Live Landmark, who is getting her doctorate in psychology.

 

I may be mis-remembering this but wasn't the student in the phone call associated with Henrik Vogt?
Also didn't Trisha Greenhalgh travel to Norway as some sort of procedural opponent to him receiving his PhD, i.e. to give him an easy ride?
Trisha Greenhalgh and Paul Garner have become the BBC's go to people for Long Covid & ME replacing Wessely.
It's a small (BPS) world!

 

I will admit I’m prone to misremembering accurately.
Edit -I meant inaccurately!
At the same time it feels, to me at least, that there was some “hinting” or “breadcrumbs up the garden path” blurring of him having ME.

So Garner recovered from Long Covid.
He contracted it around the first UK lockdown, March 2020. He was unwell after that for some time, however was running 5-10k within 3/4 months and doing BMF, and scuba diving in the Caribbean? within 6/7 by October? where he contracted Dengue fever.


He just met the Long Covid criteria. Just. Had the clinics been running, he may have been referred, equally he may not, given his exercise capabilities.

 

Just working out where he fits in, assume this is why he had to team up in his reply to Monbiot, as he didn’t have ME.

 

It attracts people who like the idea of having special insight and standing in contrast to the unenlightened masses.

Garner told his story of recovery as if it was a test of character that he passed.

Perhaps what makes people vulnerable to BPS ideas is deep down feeling like illness is the result of a character flaw (which is approximately the message by the BPS model). What happens then if you believe this and suddenly become "one of those patients"? Maybe going around the internet and media telling the story of how they overcame their illness makes sure everybody knows they're a good person and shouldn't be punished.