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@Trish Excellent comment. Thanks. For anyone considering submitting their comments as a letter to the Editor (for publication) the address is letters@thetimes.co.uk You must include your full name, address and tel number. Also best to keep it less than 250 words. Of course, if you happen to...

I think this reflects exceedingly well on the ME community. This article appears to have been researched for months and Sharpe appears to have has spent most of that time trying to induce abusive Tweets. If these are the best/worst examples they have been able to come up with, the ME community...

At a meeting in 2010 she told the REC that she had worked with Parker* and that he was good: Extract of Minutes from South West 2 REC meeting held on 2 December 2010...

Great result, John. And great that it was a unanimous decision. Thanks for all your hard work.

Don’t hold your breath. Expect complaints to your University, ad hominem attacks and the destruction of strawman arguments, but not public debate. Also, do not underestimate SW. He may have many faults but he is no fool. If there are weaknesses in your arguments he will exploit them with...

Apologies for slow reply. And apologies if what I write has been said by others. I didn't have the capacity to respond as quickly I would have liked, or to read all the comments which have appeared since, but I wanted to respond because I think this is a really important issue. I don’t think we...

I don’t think there needs to be a contract. As I understand, the legal requirement is for there to be a duty of care, for that duty to have been breached, and for that breach to have caused injury or loss. If someone could prove that they had suffered injury or loss as direct consequence of...

Reminder to anyone who may be able to attend that Prof Chalder is giving a talk on “Medically unexplained symptoms: my clinical and research journey over 30 years” on Wed next week (13th March) Visiting speaker: Prof Trudie Chalder (King’s College London) Chair: Prof Patrick Luyten Location...

The gut microbiome from patients with schizophrenia modulates the glutamate-glutamine-GABA cycle and schizophrenia-relevant behaviors in mice (2019), Peng Zheng et al http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/2/eaau8317 Abstract: Do we know if anyone has tried transferring faecal samples from...

Historically, do you think the treatment of, say, people with MS when they were diagnosed with hysteria was ethical? Were the doctors making those diagnoses being reasonably diligent? I would argue that reasonable diligence would have required doctors to admit that they did not understand what...

Not the symptoms you list as associated with mast cell activation. The main symptom I get is an increase in the discomfort in my face, which has been one of my main symptoms from the beginning. (I spend a lot of time with ice packs on my face to numb the discomfort.) Also, an increase in the...

Given the history of people being wrongly diagnosed with psychosomatic illness, both historically with illnesses which were previously misclassified and currently whith diagnoses that are missed, I am guessing that even those who believe in the existence of psychosomatic illness would concede...

I understand your point but I do think it matters: First, I’m not convinced that there is such a thing as a psychosomatic disorder, or that the diagnosis is ever helpful to patients. History suggests that it is used as a stopgap until a proper medical explanation is established. If the example...

Can PACE-type CBT and GET be described as a psychological and physical respectively? I know what you mean but are they not both psychology therapies intended to alter physical behaviour? To me, the interesting ethical questions are: 1) Is it ethical to try to convince patients that their...

Yes. I would first write to or phone BBC complaints department to ask what has happened to your complaint. (If you phone make sure you get a reference for the call.) I would delay taking it to Ofcom until you have received a decision from the BBC. I had a similar delay when I complained to the...

Whatever happens when perfumes and cleaning products trigger asthma symptoms, I suspect it is similar to what is happening with me. It is interesting to me that the types of things which appear to trigger asthma symptoms are similar to the types of things which make my symptoms worse. I have...

He has retired from the NHS but was planning to continue with some of his private work. My understanding is that Dr Lazarova has taken over running the CFS service at Sutton Hospital but nobody has taken over Dr Bansal’s ME/CFS clinic that he ran from the immunology department at St Helier...

Sorry, you misunderstood what I was trying to say. The odours that trigger what feel like immunological responses are perfumes and sprayed cleaning products (and some other things). The reactions I get from certain foods are from eating them, not smelling them. Apologies if that wasn’t clear...

I’ve very interested in this. My experience of sensitivity to odours – in my case it is particularly perfumes and sprayed cleaning products – is quite different to my sensitivity to noise and light. With noise and light it is just very unpleasant – similar to being subjected to loud noise with a...

To put this into context, 16 metres, the distance he was jumping when he supposedly had ME, is further than the female world record of 15.50 metres. The fact that he was still jogging and jumping further than any woman has ever jumped in history suggest that his physical function was nowhere...