BBC: Long Covid course [LP] is ‘exploiting people’, says ex-GB rower, 2024, article and radio program

JemPD said:
she says that a neurologist told her she'd never recover & never have children... thats a familiar statement its what the woman from the Acuseeds thing said shed been told - by a neurologist.

Who are these neurologists who are so radically far from the establishment view???? They are stepping well outside of the lines. I find it utterly astonishing that any neurologist would tell anyone with a dx of ME/CFS, CF, Fibro, Pots etc that they'd never get better or have children, for a start its not true, and for another it goes 100% against the aberrant belief/FND/Deconditioning/conversion blah blah 'dont indulge their ideas that they're ill' rubbish.

I'm incredulous TBH
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Agree that the details are weird yet again. I almost never see testimonies like this, with those words and framing, especially "convinced she wouldn't recover". Somehow it's usually people who have something to sell.

Really furious at all the damn sickxploitation and how it's enabled by bad MDs and journalists. Even though I've become a very cynical person, I couldn't imagine when COVID was spreading in 2020 and LC became obvious that nothing would change from it. It's disgusting.
 
hibiscuswahine said:
I am really concerned LP is being trialled in LC clinics in the UK.

I am also really concerned insurance companies in NZ see LP as a legitimate treatment they recommend for LC. (as reported by members of LC/ME support groups I belong to)

Even though we don't have LC or ME/CFS clinics in NZ, the medical community often turn to the UK to see what they are doing (as well as Australia and the US) and use these examples to legitimise new services without doing any real research into it....(or not having the public servants to research it, as they have all lost their jobs as the government tightens it's belt.)

I am very concerned by the news LP is being used in rehab clinics in NZ? which are you referring to Hutan?

The Royal College of GP's in NZ are divided between the LP promotors like Prof Bruce Arroll at Auckland University, teaching LP to GP's at CME conferences (and certain lecturers in general practice at Otago who like promoting Mel Abbot's kiwi offshoot to LP "The Switch" to their undergraduate medical students) Yes it is the easy way out for GP's and other disciplines.... but I just wanted to point out that there are two camps in our GP college with many members of the Royal NZ College of GP's that support and teach the biomedical approach eg Dr Cathy Stephenson (Wellington Clinical School of General Practice). Possibly there is a turf war going on within there as there is such a gapping void of treatment for ME/CFS and now LC and ultimately is either about power, culture and money when it comes to change within medicine.

People like Bruce and Mel and all the LP coaches exploit this treatment gap by using a psychological pseudoscience. (Yes, I do understand many people in the forum see much of psychology and psychiatry as a pseudoscience but there is a a difference between the LP coaches use of psychological concepts and techniques versus supportive CBT for anxiety and depression associated with having ME/CFS and Mindfulness Stress Reduction Therapy which may help people cope with this debilitating illness but do little to treat the illness (in my opinion, as a former psychiatrist with ME having treated pwME).
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Spot on
 
Yann04 said:
Too tired to extract quotes, but the canary just dropped a banger on the Lightning Process — https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2024/05/23/lightning-process-long-covid/
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Thanks for that @Yann04 ! We need some hard hitting journalism like this. Steve Topple doesn't mince his words:

'The BBC has exposed how an insidious group of predatory charlatans have been gaslighting long Covid patients. It revolves around a pseudoscientific treatment known as the ‘Lightning Process’.

It would be shocking, were it not for the experience of those with another post-viral disease. This is because it isn’t the first time these quack practitioners have scammed vulnerable patients. The reality is, they’ve been grifting off of the devastation myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) has caused to the lives of the millions who live with it for years.'

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Lou B Lou said:
Thanks for that @Yann04 ! We need some hard hitting journalism like this. Steve Topple doesn't mince his words:

'The BBC has exposed how an insidious group of predatory charlatans have been gaslighting long Covid patients. It revolves around a pseudoscientific treatment known as the ‘Lightning Process’.

It would be shocking, were it not for the experience of those with another post-viral disease. This is because it isn’t the first time these quack practitioners have scammed vulnerable patients. The reality is, they’ve been grifting off of the devastation myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) has caused to the lives of the millions who live with it for years.'

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It’s Hannah Sharland
 
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2024/05/23/lightning-process-long-covid/
Yet while BACME doesn’t appear to openly endorse the approach, a number of its board members are trained in NLP. This includes occupational therapists Charlie Adler and Marina Townend. Notably, both work at NHS ME clinics. Worse still, in 2019, BACME chair Anna Gregorowski led a review of treatments for young people with ME, which concluded that:

The Lightning Process has been shown to be effective when added to medical care.
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Just gets worse and worse, doesn't it. :grumpy:

BACME have not 'reformed' in any meaningful sense. They have rebranded and tweaked their sales pitch, and carried right on as before.
 
Deanne NZ said:
I have been keeping an eye out for other LP articles to see how Phil Parker responds and saw this one from Scotland. It is not great as it makes him seem reasonable. Again it is missing the significant harm angle.
https://glasgowstandard.com/2024/05...at-is-it-and-can-it-help-long-covid-patients/
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That article looks like advertising. I wonder whether Parker paid for it, or sent out a press release that the writer has copied. Needs a response.

Amw66 said:
Did they not advertise for a new communications manager recently ? ( I could well be mistaken, but that might account for it)
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I thought Russell Fleming was the MEA comms manager. We've been complaining about the MEA social media posting links to media uncritically for ages.
 
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Deanne NZ said:
https://longcovidadvocacy.substack....mpaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

Tin Foil Hat Territory? The Gupta Program, the Lightning Process and the BPS in Long Covid and ME.
How brain retraining therapies intersect with the biopsychosocial model

LONG COVID ADVOCACY
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Yann04 said:
Too tired to extract quotes, but the canary just dropped a banger on the Lightning Process — https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2024/05/23/lightning-process-long-covid/
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If you only have the energy to read one of these articles, I recommend the first one by Long Covid Advocacy which is both better written and covers more aspects of the problem, including information on UK NHS LC clinics using some of the same brain training methods despite complete lack of evidence.
 
Deanne NZ said:
I have been keeping an eye out for other LP articles to see how Phil Parker responds and saw this one from Scotland. It is not great as it makes him seem reasonable. Again it is missing the significant harm angle.
https://glasgowstandard.com/2024/05...at-is-it-and-can-it-help-long-covid-patients/
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The author is a Journalism student

https://www.facebook.com/p/Ethan-Paterson-100009743711552/?locale=zh_TW

The website says Glasgow Uni at the bottom.

The 'Glasgow Standard' invented I guess as a way of their students practising writing articles. I don't think it is a 'real' newspaper.
 
Yann04 said:
Too tired to extract quotes, but the canary just dropped a banger on the Lightning Process — https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2024/05/23/lightning-process-long-covid/
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Good one.

Seems relevant to point out that in what I hoped would be a thread documenting silly antics that would soon die off, the very first MD I noticed denying against Long Covid was Henrik Vogt, of LP fame.

I have no doubt that in some places, most likely Norway, thousands of people have already been subjected to it, they went at it right from the start. Any good scammer will jump on a good opportunity. If anyone were to look into it, I'm sure we'd find plenty, but it's not as if this is any different than the CBT+GET paradigm that was quickly established as, and remains, the norm even though it obviously doesn't work.
 
ukxmrv said:
The author is a Journalism student

https://www.facebook.com/p/Ethan-Paterson-100009743711552/?locale=zh_TW

The website says Glasgow Uni at the bottom.

The 'Glasgow Standard' invented I guess as a way of their students practising writing articles. I don't think it is a 'real' newspaper.
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Glasgow Standard Twitter

https://twitter.com/user/status/1793666503558279358



Tweet Content

'Those suffering from Long Covid have few options to get help for their condition. Some, however, have turned to the Lightning Process, created by Dr Phil Parker.
@Ethan_1908 writes about what the process is, who it has helped, and what the critiques are:
https://glasgowstandard.com/2024/05...at-is-it-and-can-it-help-long-covid-patients/

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The Glasgow Standard (journalism student paper) interviewed Ewan Dale, ME Association Trustee, for a counter statement to the numerous quotes from Phil Parker.


'Ewan Dale, a spokesperson for the Association, detailed their issues with the process.

“We are aware of the possibilities of illness behaviour and the power of positive thinking, but unfortunately, we continue to see that those who prefer such aspects of approaches to so many of the unknowns and uncertainties in medical practice tend to fail to start addressing investigating the possibilities in a medically balanced and incisive manner,” he said.'
https://glasgowstandard.com/2024/05...at-is-it-and-can-it-help-long-covid-patients/



Well, that's clear as mud. Perhaps Ewan said other things which the student journalist didn't quote. But all the same, compared with Parker's slick marketing schpeel, Ewan's statement is wordy, lame and Useless in countering Lightning. Doesn't the MEA have pre-prepared statements on what's wrong with Lightning?

If not why not??

For a start Phil Parker calls a disabling disease "an issue". Any comment on that, MEA? Apparently not.

The MEA have let us down AGAIN.



This article, while obviously not in the national press, does illustrate the journalism tendency to present Phil Parker's viewpoint as the primary and established viewpoint, and Lightning as an established treatment for ME - and so the criticism of Parker's viewpoint and Lightning are framed as challenging established facts. I think Brian Hughes points out that's called 'Anchoring'.

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