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On Wikipedia it says that evidence-based medicine is about classifying the evidence according to its strength and giving more consideration to stronger evidence. The strongest evidence is from meta-analyses, systematic reviews and randomized-controlled trials. I think that's the generally...

I would like to see an explanation of what commitment to science and evidence-based medicine means. It could be reasonably be interpreted to mean "trusting The Lancet and Cochrane". In the context of ME/CFS I think it means recognizing that not all ideas about the illness that are circulating...

Nice.

The reason patients overlook this (as a group) is because they aren't good at interpreting research findings. I feel that the BPS model and the general behaviour of its proponents and therapists has alienated patients. The patients then sought support elsewhere and became strongly attached to...

I think I know what you want to say and it's not easy to express. The high disease burden and neglect of the illness by the medical profession means treatment is in high demand by patients. At any sign of an effective treatment, the despair of patients easily turns into enthusiasm that is...

They are awfully far on the right in terms of words and actions for being someone stating to be on the left.

This is a nice presentation.

Do you see ME/CFS as one heterogeneous illness or several illness that have large overlap in their characteristics? If it's the latter, then what is the common thread in all of them?

Could there be a diagnostic test for ME/CFS based on brain imaging?

They are eroding the credibility of science.

Ouch! I don't think CBT/GET would pass these criteria, even though the main problem is that PACE is not a controlled clinical trial while being presented as such.

He says the IDO2 mutation appears necessary to develop ME.

Germany is horribly backwards in some ways. They love homeopathy, psychosomatic medicine and Freud. Glad that things are improving though.

A diagram from the article. Very similar to the model in PACE which didn't produce any meaningful effects. Just because someone can fantasize that it is so does not mean it actually is, but maybe that's a difficult concept to understand for the psychosomatic medicine crowd. I'm also curious...

I agree that PEM is emerging as useful distinguishing feature. There are probably also a significant number of patients that have an unexplainable syndrome without PEM that is otherwise similar to ME/CFS. The ethical response is to include these people in research and efforts to improve care.

I don't think that's "another side to the argument". Obviously it doesn't make sense to treat a person as having ME/CFS when they actually some other disease. I'm talking about advocates insisting that for example only the ICC diagnostic criteria can diagnose true ME and that it's the...

ME is caused by malfunctioning machines left behind on Mars by an ancient and now extinct alien race. There, I have "explained" ME, or so the logic of BPS theorists goes. Whether anyone finds this plausible and convincing, and whether there is any evidence that this is true is a different...

Since the first the first community defined outcome listed is disease definition. While parts of the community insist on narrow and exclusive definitions of ME it will be difficult to have truly strong advocacy because they are, in the worst case, trying to exclude anyone that doesn't fit their...

Going from memory, in PACE the expectations for GET and APT were not different, but this was at baseline. Using this to claim that expectation bias was not a concern implies also claiming that the different treatments received later infused exactly the same expectations in participants, which...

A recovery from long chronic illness would come with having to readjust to the new level of health and build up one's life again. Is that what is talked about here, or is it the usual fantasy about the power of psychology making a recovery happen?