RNZCGP GoodFellow Unit MedCases CPD Sept 2023: Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis

Oh SNT, that is so dispiriting. Horrendous misinformation.

Is there anything we can do?

 

It's mostly an ad for the Lightning Process.

 

What is the connection between the royal college and this Goodfellow Unit I couldn’t find about us info. All there.seems to be is a logo

 

I reckon it could be worth writing to them - there is a contact form. There's a bit to say -
NICE guidelines:
rating the outcomes of the PACE trial as being low to very low quality evidence;
explicitly warning against the Lightning Process and GET;
the fact that the PACE trial was not a sound study of pacing, as the Adaptive Pacing treatment was not pacing. Pacing is an approach that most people with ME/CFS come to adopt given time, limiting activity so as to avoid post-exertional malaise - most of the participants in the PACE trial would have already been pacing at the baseline.

CDC rejection of GET

The Lightning Process - background of the founder, high cost, MLM approach, Flaws in the Crawley study

The recognition by Cochrane that their 2019 Exercise therapy for CFS is not fit for purpose.

The repudiation of virtually all ME/CFS organisations around the world of graded exercise therapy as a treatment of ME/CFS.

Perhaps linking to the comments on the Cochrane petition (although it gets hard to explain what we are petitioning Cochrane for)

Yes, it would help to find the Board or some organisation the Goodfellow Unit is answerable to.

 

So, the School of Population Health at the University of Auckland might be the target of a letter.

 

I note that Professor Paula Lorgelly is a faculty member of the School of Population Health at the University of Auckland. She was instrumental in setting up Long covid Registry. She seems to have sensible ideas about post-viral conditions. Maybe the School of Population health is the organisation to target.

How on earth did Bruce Arroll get appointed as Director of the Goodfellow Unit?
https://www.brucearroll.com/resources

https://www.nzdoctor.co.nz/article/news/lightning-process-rewiring-brain
Lightning Process coach Jenny Oliver speaking at the Goodfellow Symposium in March 2023

Bruce Arrow replied to Ros Vallings' very tame suggestion that the Lightning Process wasn't an ME/CFS treatment with this, coauthored with the NZ champion of the Lightning Process, Jenny Oliver:

There's more than a whiff of vested interest here.

On that same NZ Doctor site, the RNZCGP is suggesting that having Arroll chair Jenny Oliver's workshops on LP at the GPCME conference ensured balance...

 

It is concerning how dogmatically convinced Dr Arroll is in his misinformation. I can't understand how anyone can be so one sided unless they have a personal vested interest, or have no clue about ME/CFS and research methodology.

It would be an interesting study finding out how individual clinicians reach such unswerving conviction that they are right when the 'evidence' is so biased.

At what stage in their career do they decide who and what to believe, and can they ever change their view?

 

Heaven help us. The Association for Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) featured Bruce Arroll instructing on designing RCTs in 2015.
https://anlp.org/rapport/read/lite/rapport-48-winter-2015

I assume it's the same Bruce Arroll. Because here in 2016 he was presenting at the NZ GP's conference:
http://www.gpcme.co.nz/pdf/2016 North/Fri_room6_1400_Arroll NLP ws 42 & 54 fridasy 1400.pdf
Professor Bruce Arroll
Department of General Practice and Primary Health Care
University of Auckland
14:00 - 14:55 WS #42: Practical Uses of Neurolinguistic Programming in Primary Care
15:05 - 16:00 WS #54: Practical Uses of Neurolinguistic Programming in Primary Care (Repeated)

I think we have the answer as to why the Lightning Process has been all over the NZ GP conferences.

 

EBM = Extraordinarily Batshit-crazy Medicine.
It would be funny if it weren't for the shocking amount of harm it causes.

Reading this in the same week as all the hundreds of messages on our petition with personal testimonies of lives ruined by GET, and hearing of cases of malnutrition not being treated and death makes it seem criminally negligent.

I'm left feeling helpless with rage, only I don't have any energy for rage, so I'm left with immense sadness.

And a determination to fight on.