Dr Norman Swan: ME/CFS is more psychosomatic than long-COVID

He insisted that ME (well, CFS to him) is just fatigue and nothing else. So he genuinely has no idea what ME is at all, he's just spewing what eminent people he trusts told him and hasn't bothered reading anything that doesn't confirm it.

So not hypocritical, just incompetent. After all he's the "science journalist" who was told to his face by Richard Horton that the PACE researchers were neutral researchers who took a step back to evaluate this treatment critically. A treatment they invented and have been promoting for decades. Either he knew it's BS or was too lazy to check. Either way he's clearly not much of a critical thinker.

 

I remember an offer was made by others on my behalf. I also met with a producer at the network who seemed interested but nothing came of that. It seems pretty clear evidence isn't going to change his mind and he'll likely just use efforts to prove him wrong as proof of his preconceived notions about patients. He touted PACE 10 years ago and is obviously aware of the controversy around it and isn't interested in revising his opinion. frustrating.

 

Hey, it's not as if this has real life consequences or anything.

Oh, wait. It does. Uh. Weird. Do no harm... or else: nothing? Absolutely nothing. OK, then.

 

On today’s episode of the podcast, Tegan (Norman Swan’s cohost) said this:

“So Norman, on Friday's Coronacast we mentioned chronic fatigue syndrome in passing, and we've had a lot of response from our audience about it. We don't have time to do it justice today but we will pick it up tomorrow and give it the attention that it deserves then.”

The consensus here is a feeling of dread.

 

I suggested to Tegan that they speak with Emerge, to get accurate info, but we’ve not had any contact, and I doubt Swan would do that. We’re all holding our collective breaths.

 

I suspect they'll have a certain guest from UNSW.

 

Does he still have nice teeth and hair?

 

No idea, it's a radio show so we'll never know!

 

Government agencies tend to ignore complaints and the ABC is no different unfortunately.

I just saw a suggestion from a doctor that it might be more worthwhile to complain about Swan's behaviour to AHPRA (Australia's healthcare practitioner regulator). Swan is still a registered medical professional.

I really don't have the spoons to look into it properly tonight, but there are some broadly-worded clauses that might fit this situation:

• serious concerns about the practitioner’s skills, knowledge or judgement in their profession.

• any other behaviour that is inconsistent with the practitioner being fit and proper to be a registered health practitioner.

• the practitioner’s communication, including, someone being treated rudely, inappropriately or disrespectfully

Misrepresenting the science and trying to smear an entire group of patients seems to fit in with these.

https://www.ahpra.gov.au/Notifications/How-to-submit-a-concern.aspx

 

Today’s podcast is up and we got the best outcome we could have hoped for... an on-air correction! It’s not perfect but, given this is Norman Swan we’re talking about, this is a really good shift. It starts at 7.30.
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/coronacast/when-might-we-see-more-cases-in-was-outbreak/13110754

Transcript for those who don’t want to or can’t listen:

 

Yeah, it was really significant that Tegan said that Norman’s comments “fly in the face” of WHO, CDC, NHMRC. It shows that the medical establishment has moved, and people like Swan are being forced to catch up. For once, we had the medical establishment in our corner.

It’s solid progress from someone who has been clinging to PACE as quality evidence.

 

No, they're simply skirting around what they really believe - that it is all in the brain. The pain reference is a thinly veiled reference to central sensitisation.

There has been a consistent finding in the 10 studies that studied the phenomena and Norman Swan is probably completely unaware of this.

 

Spot on. This is a non-apology.

Much in the same way they use the FND label, they're trying to placate patients by telling them "you have a real illness with a serious-sounding acronym" while winking behind their backs at their doctor mates because they all know that it means "psychosomatic".

Edit: that being said, I know from experience that this the closest we'll get to an apology from the ABC.

 

I agree. If we were measuring success here by whether or not Swan changed his mind, then you would have to say that there was no progress. But that was never the outcome for me. What we needed was for the audience to hear that, contrary to what he said on Friday, the condition isn’t psychosomatic. The audience wouldn’t have heard any of the nuances in what he said that we know were there. But they definitely heard him say that it’s a physical condition with multiple symptoms. This was as good an outcome as we could have hoped for, given our history with Swan.

Whether or not Swan believes what he said today is irrelevant, IMO. He and those like him will be the last to change, we know that. But the evidence is strong enough now that formal complaints resulted in him having to make a correction. That’s new (I’m thinking by comparison with when Swan had Sharpe and Horton on his radio program back in 2011 to talk about PACE).

 

This was good too, from the Associate Editor of Guardian Australia, in response to Swan’s comments.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1355047373483896837

 

So they are saying ME is not post viral despite the fact it was named for a disease which was a long term consequence of epidemics. How ignorant these people are.

Also Longcovid is valid because the onset is fixed but ME isn't because the cause has not been found. This despite many other diseases not having the cause discovered yet.