Maeve Boothby O'Neill - articles about her life, death and inquest

No disrespect to Sarah but he is qualified to talk about diabetes.



image of Professor David Strain

Image: Professor David Strain

University of Exeter Medical School, Exeter​

Dr David Strain based in the Diabetes and Vascular Research Centre at the University of Exeter Medical School.

His main focus is the health of older adults with diabetes; ensuring the right patient gets the right treatment. He has performed the only study to date demonstrating the feasibility of individualizing targets for older adults across Europe. This has informed the new UK guidance document for the management of older adults with diabetes and Frailty, of which he was lead author.

Additionally, he has performed a global project exploring the causes of clinical inertia in diabetes in conjunction with the IDF called ‘Time 2 Do More in Diabetes’. As a result he has initiated several projects in the UK across primary and secondary care aiming to reduce this phenomenon
 
ME/CFS Final Delivery Plan. (A national healthcare policy document)

My PA who has been a professional carer for 25 years will not be able to access the 3rd eLearning Module on severe and very severe ME/CFS, due to be available later this year because she does not have the required email account. For those who do not know the 'IDP' is the 'My Reality: Interim Delivery Plan' attached to the public consultation which took place in Sept/Oct 2023. Below are what I believe are the reasons why.

The following quotes are from the Final Delivery Plan





This feeds in to a problem with informed consent because of Montgomery v. Lanarkshire Healthcare Board [2015] Supreme Court decision.

Below is from a review of the legal aspects surrounding the principle of informed consent. It includes a discussion about the 'therapeutic exception' formerly known as 'therapeutic privilege'.

Author Emma Cave Professor of Healthcare Law, published 29 June 2017 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1473779517709452#fn90-1473779517709452

Long read - mostly for medico-legal people - but includes this on therapeutic exception i.e. withholding of information:




GMC guidance on consent:

This guidance came into effect on 9 November 2020.

The guidance was updated on 13 December 2024 when regulation of physician associates and anaesthesia associates by the GMC came into effect.

https://www.gmc-uk.org/professional-standards/the-professional-standards/decision-making-and-consent


In this BMJ article written 2 years after the Montgomery decision, whose authors include a QC - 12 May 2017 https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j2224



It could be argued that the ME/CFS Final Delivery Plan, as a cross government healthcare policy document, tells doctors it's OK to carry on as before regarding severe and very severe patients, in particular.


ETA: The Montgomery case involved a pregnant woman with diabetes.

We need to push for patients affected being able to assess this in such an area of distrust, and lack of expertise especially. You’re suggesting a worrying motive around handling of very complex cases?
I also dislike how all of the severe ME APPG inquiry evidence gathering is behind the scenes when this can be live streamed. I understand that some might not want their testimony public but even the recruitment is hush hush and not in any of the online spaces I visit & there’s this aura, in my opinion, of cover up and keeping awkward stuff hidden. Where there should be lights , scrutiny, inclusion and openness there’s closed doors
 
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Action for ME made Dr David Strain their Medical Advisor in 2021. He is setting us back decades.



Sonya Chowdhury, Chief Executive, Action for ME, says:

'Dr David Strain is our Medical Adviser and was appointed in June 2021.

Dr Strain brings a wealth of clinical and academic experience to our charity, as Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School and as a consultant to the Devon ME/CFS specialist service. He leads the British Medical Association’s Covid-19 response team and has repeatedly drawn parallels between Long Covid and ME/CFS, calling for research to benefit all post-viral illnesses.'

.

To be fair there isn’t many options and as an occasionally consulted Dr on general m.e he might not have been too bad. However, he clearly lacked regarding MBN & I saw problems in his early nhs modules but afaiu they were being open to feedback. I'd guess that the DHSC delivery plan groups or PAG doesn't have great number & breadth of severe ME experience in order to fully assess what’s being presented & why should not the community be allowed?
 
I gather that he did not have the time to spare, which Action for ME could do with more of, from their ?Medical Advisor. At that time he seemed to be spread thin, like many dedicated people working, befriending, caring and loving in gaps designed, yes designed, into all systems - something being universally out of whack.

Well globally out of whack. It might not be the universe. "Do not adjust your set, there is a fault in reality". I remember that from the last century. But who tells my doctors its not my fault. My Reality is not my reality.

All I knew then about Dr Strain, was that he insisted to our MPs, in some all-party Parliamentary Group, that M.E and Long Covid be researched together, which I thought was unusually perceptive for the times, superbly laudable, sounded like good leadership, my hero etc. Can Action for ME still consult him, and ask him things?

Where does he stand now on malnutrition and options on trialling various medical feeds? Is he still medical advisor for a charity? Does he know why special medical feeds for the unspecified conditions were withdrawn?

Did he agree with the hoi-polloi that a healthy diet is sufficient in all cases? Does he now agree that there is a distinct subgroup, with partial digestive failure, to be manageably prevented, before it becomes total failure?

Might he surmise that maybe there is another sub-group, following a virus, which mutated some time between 1985 and 2005, maybe, which sub-groups hasn't got the same chance, of preventing total failure?
With Dr strains many jobs

- diabetes dr, old age dr, BMJ rep, long covid research Co ordinator,

how much time is he devoting to ME/CFS

& how many severely affected, besides A handful of critical cases, has he ever seen,

to have the role he has writing guidance?
Ps I'd like to know the geography of groups writing guidance, but I query the cohort of particularly exclusive doctors who dont want other doctors involved, and so they dicker about current consultancy criteria, regardless of what warrants what. It became a closed shop. Consultants to the industry cite opinions too

Lucy Letby got targeted by a police consultant and expert witness with insufficient clinical experience. But Its not altgether consistent and rational, once its a closed shop. Group-think is supposed to be pre-empted by good practice and industry standards. It took an ex-MInister to say its the wild west out there. Once off the job
 
I gather that he did not have the time to spare, which Action for ME could do with more of, from their ?Medical Advisor. At that time he seemed to be spread thin, like many dedicated people working, befriending, caring and loving in gaps designed, yes designed, into all systems - something being universally out of whack.

Well globally out of whack. It might not be the universe. "Do not adjust your set, there is a fault in reality". I remember that from the last century. But who tells my doctors its not my fault. My Reality is not my reality.

All I knew then about Dr Strain, was that he insisted to our MPs, in some all-party Parliamentary Group, that M.E and Long Covid be researched together, which I thought was unusually perceptive for the times, superbly laudable, sounded like good leadership, my hero etc. Can Action for ME still consult him, and ask him things?

Where does he stand now on malnutrition and options on trialling various medical feeds? Is he still medical advisor for a charity? Does he know why special medical feeds for the unspecified conditions were withdrawn?

Did he agree with the hoi-polloi that a healthy diet is sufficient in all cases? Does he now agree that there is a distinct subgroup, with partial digestive failure, to be manageably prevented, before it becomes total failure?

Might he surmise that maybe there is another sub-group, following a virus, which mutated some time between 1985 and 2005, maybe, which sub-groups hasn't got the same chance, of preventing total failure?

Ps I'd like to know the geography of groups writing guidance, but I query the cohort of particularly exclusive doctors who dont want other doctors involved, and so they dicker about current consultancy criteria, regardless of what warrants what. It became a closed shop. Consultants to the industry cite opinions too

Lucy Letby got targeted by a police consultant and expert witness with insufficient clinical experience. But Its not altgether consistent and rational, once its a closed shop. Group-think is supposed to be pre-empted by good practice and industry standards. It took an ex-MInister to say its the wild west out there. Once off the job

At a very weak APPG meeting in around 2023, when there was clamour for the appg to do something about very severe ME / critical cases safeguarding, in response to Maeve and others that had made the news, Dr strain spoke at it & the very minimal minutes provided didn’t imo show much urgency or vision, seeming to imply long covid might Help with this “issue” (despite a lot of UK long covid research Not being particularly relevant to severe ME afaics)

“Discussion of severe ME with Professor David Strain
Professor David Strain spoke to the group about:
• The significant increase in severe ME cases over recent years
• The difficulty of treating severe ME given that hospitals often aren't attuned to patients' requirements
• The hope that current research into Long Covid will incorporate other post-viral syndromes and inform research on ME”


The trouble with adopting m.e community leaders from the long covid cohort, which dr strain mainly is , as is Jo platt & dr binita Kane, is their starting point was 5 years ago. There isn’t, in my opinion, reflection that we are somewhere in a 30 - 40 year battle for simple fairness and equality in terms of services and research resources that has had multiple attempts to “deliver” something and fallen way short, with the stakes, for the long-term moderate and severe partients waiting, ramping up with each opportunity lost and decade slipping by.

*slightly edited
 
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