Trisha Greenhalgh on ME/CFS and Long Covid

She didn't just demonise our lived experience, she authored an e-learning module for GPs that actively taught her professional colleagues to promote treatment that ME/CFS patients have consistently reported causes significant and sometimes permanent severe harm.

 

Oh my god this makes me so so angry

 

How can you have a Covid recovery resource site if there are no data on what to recommend?
Some people seem to have got research very back to front. Not a lot of equipoise.

 

At least one of the people in your post has been asked for an email contact now, but I haven't looked at others.
https://twitter.com/user/status/1354803770094313476

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1355485048296894465

https://twitter.com/user/status/1355486773430906882

https://twitter.com/user/status/1355494378031243265

 

"Ah!" indeed.

 

This is what I don't get. They were declaring paths to recovery like back in April. I mean, how would anyone know?

 

Reading Gerada's thread I'm getting really creepy vibes about the culture of UK medicine. Same with Greenhalgh. Everyone is just plain sucking up to them, showering them with praise despite not even knowing what is being discussed. It's seriously creepy. Reminds me of corporate boards where a cult-like president has everyone outdoing each other praising him so they can get their patronage.

This is seriously unhealthy. I'm used to there being essentially no criticism in this area, no reads the actual papers yet shower each other with praise. But this is near cult-like. I'm sure it's just politics because that's how people get noticed but that's not any better at all. There is no discussion of substance, only a "that eminent person says bad things about those others therefore those others are horrible people who deserve bad things".

Seriously so many comments are basically "everything you say is always right and will always be right forever and ever". No one could even answer basic questions about what is being discussed, who is being discussed and why. Yet they pile on the praise. Extremely creepy.

 

To some extent I think this is just UK Tweeticine. But with the piece in the BMJ I think you are right to be alarmed. This all started with Presidents of Royal Colleges becoming celebrity appointments - sort of for B movie stars who had done a lot of films but hadn't quite made it in research Oscars. That was around 2000 I think. GP and Psych presidents started banging on about needing more money for their patch. Physicians and Surgeons less so maybe because they had more of an eye on the private income. The College of Physicians has been remarkably silent in terms of any political challenge to the government as things have slid downhill. There nearest thing we got to politics was maybe when Dame Carol Black said that there were too many women in medicine - which went down like a uranium balloon.

 

The lack of criticism I think it has a lot do with fear of reprisal. They're sensitive to criticism and tend to respond aggressively to it. Nothing is allowed to tarnish the image of the competent expert.

The irony is that with this close mindedness you can't ever become very competent.

 

Now, @dave30th, surely you are forgetting how things go. How did Chalder and Wessely know the best sort of CBT for ME in 1989?

 

Clearly it's all crystal balls.

 

Confirms she has not read a damn thing about ME, remains completely oblivious to the entire issue. Doesn't stop her from talking about it, though. This is completely inexcusable, we have literally been giving her all that information for months. This is worse than feigned ignorance, she cannot possibly be this ignorant that there is a controversy at all. She is completely unqualified for what she is undertaking with LC.

Plus, again, "someone with fatigue". She is still insisting out loud that ME is just fatigue and nothing but fatigue. It doesn't take more than an hour to figure out this is invalid.

Note that she restricted replies to people she follows, guaranteeing an echo chamber. No one who disagrees with her can reply.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1355472342844108801


Well, not everyone:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1355557609261166593


At least someone with good sense can reply.

 

The level of insensitivity from someone supposed to be in primary care is mind-blowing. TG claims not to understand what the fuss is about - maybe she should have pondered that when she found she had to block thousands of people.

Fortunately, this 'chatting among friends' is open for all the world to read and evaluate.
But maybe what is really needed is for members of parliament to come to understand how the medical system is being debased by this sort of flippant disregard for proper practice. Carol Monaghan seems to have some idea of the problem. I am not convinced that many other do.

 

Indeed.