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I had, what I was told, the latest Pfizer booster yesterday. I got it on grounds of age, just scraped it, as I will be 65 next month. My PA got it on the grounds of being my carer (she works with another person with ME too). Had I been a few months younger would have been in the position that my...

Is Cochrane subject to freedom of information? Would the UK freedom of information laws apply in this situation or the Swedish? Given the latest communication from Cochrane seems to contradict previous communications and on line information about this process would it be appropriate to start a...

Politeness/formality can be a very English way of showing aggression or trying to assert dominance. Also to address a message to a named person rather than the organisation, but then to fail to identify the sender by name only by organisation is either a play for dominance or an attempt to avoid...

I think you are right, but I suspect the wording is deliberately vague in order to give readers the false impression that they have seriously addressed more recently the issues we raised, as the conclusion of of the editorial process around the 2019 redraft was that it was grossly inadequate and...

It seems to me that Cochrane’s reply, yet again not signed by a named officer, only attempts to address two questions, the first to which they reply effectively that they will not withdraw the 2019 redraft for the foreseeable future, if ever, and the sixth to which they respond they are not...

The letter says “A randomized controlled study”, however if subjects are preselected it is not randomised unless the control group undergo the same preselection and the randomisation only happens after the preselection, and even then it is only meaningfully controlled if the control arm...

The article refers to it as ‘alternative’ medicine, but surely if it has been the dominant form of medicine in India for several thousand years and is still used by 77% of Indians it is ‘mainstream’ medicine. However simply being mainstream does not guarantee efficacy, as in the UK GET/CBT was...

The value of vaccinations is measured in probability for whole populations, what we lack is enough knowledge about how to decide what are the probabilities of benefit or harm for us as individuals. Perhaps the levels of vaccination that has accompanied this Covid-19 outbreak could have been a...

It is so hard both to deal with the stress of such situations and the inherent power imbalance. My comment was not intended as a suggestion you should take action @BazzaBoyle , rather it was directed at the wider forum as a discussion point. At the time all you can do is focus on achieving you...

Give the NICE guidelines should an English institution that is part of the NHS be making a diagnosis of CFS rather than ME/CFS?

It is potentially very complex deciding which groups to include and which to exclude, though there is benefit in knowing about some groups affiliations they may not fit in with this thread’s initial intent, for example … Sussex & Kent ME/CFS Society: this has a disproportionate number of...

Very interesting.

Rather than saying Cochrane should never be a trusted source, rather it should be treated with caution as it is at risk of specific topic areas being hijacked by narrow groups of researchers seeking to promote their own self interest. The quality of individual reviews depends on the objectivity...

My feeling is that Cochrane has a long standing problem in its structure that allows a small group of researchers to hijack a topic area for their own self interested biases and beliefs. Obviously when the withdrawal of the previous draft of their exercise review seemed on the cards it...

A great letter, any response to this hopefully will give some insight as to whether we are looking at incompetence or deliberate obfuscation.

There is also the possibility that current psychiatric diagnoses do not correspond to real world categories. For example with ME/CFS the BPS, in their formulation of CFS, seek to lump people with diverse aetiologies together, which along with their obsession with the non specific symptom of...

An excellent article by a psychologist about the Oslo Consortium and the Lightning Process as faith based medicine. Here are a couple of extracts, as per Google Translate:

Note: the UK MEA has updated their website with information on the current booster vaccine rollout (see https://meassociation.org.uk/2023/09/the-me-association-covid-autumn-booster-vaccine-information-2023/ ) and also provide a template letter for people with ME not being automatically offered...

An advantage of change.org petitions is they accept international signatories. Signed.

Just searched the NHS website to see which Covid vaccine is on offer this season here in the UK, and found the following: It looks like if you just turn up for a vaccine you will be one of the three mentioned, but will have to take whichever of the three they have in stock on the day. So...