News from Scandinavia

Prof Jonas Bergquist will be giving a zoom talk on Tuesday, 6 April. The talk will be approx 30 minutes long, in Swedish, and is free. It's part of UppTalk Weekly, an educational popular science seminar series, hosted by Uppsala University.

UppTalk Weekly: Hopp för patienter med ME - en av världens mest funktionsnedsättande sjukdomar
https://www.upptech.uu.se/kalendarium/evenemang/?eventId=59482

Copied to a new thread and added to the calendar.

 

Nothing, that I could see, on the COFFI website, https://www.coffi-international.com/

 

Ahh, the Collaborative looks to be their new venture. Looks to be the same BPS acolytes in both.

 

Wonder who is funding it?

 

There are now 5 responses to this editorial.

One in English by professor Diane O'Leary: A balanced view of animosity between researchers and the public

The rest are in Norwegian. One by an ME patient, two from the Norwegian ME Association, and the newest from professor emeritus Ola D. Saugstad.

Some google translated quotes from Saugstad:

- Brean makes a number of unsubstantiated allegations about an entire patient group. Such dehumanizing rhetoric becomes serious because the situation is the exact opposite.

- ME patients have made a unique effort to detect poor psychosomatic research, whether it is cognitive behavioral therapy, ligthning process or music therapy.

- It is time for ME patients to receive an apology from those who help to perpetuate an erroneous image of a brave group of patients, who have experienced a great deal of suffering.

Google translation of full comment: Constrained research? - ME in a new era

 

This is how she's titled in the journal: Adjunct Full Professor in Philosophy, University of Maryland Global Campus

ETA: This is her twitter bio. Not sure what's the best way to title her..
Diane O'Leary is a philosopher and bioethicist, currently a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science at University of Pittsburgh.

 

ME-sjuka Katja Hill från Fjärås är sängliggande dygnet runt – får ingen sjukpenning
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/h...liggande-dygnet-runt-far-ingen-sjukersattning

Google Translate, English

 

This article isn't about ME, but I think it's still very relevant.

It's kind of a long read, about how arguments based on ideology, moral and ethics are often disguised as value-neutral science. Technically this article is about the way some influential people in Sweden are talking about the Swedish pandemic strategy, but it's very much relevant to other "controversial" topics too, such as BPS for ME.

Wold i stället för vetenskap
https://kvartal.se/artiklar/wold-i-stallet-for-vetenskap/

(The title "Wold instead of science" is a play on words. "Wold" which a person's last name sounds like "våld", which means "violence" in Swedish.)

Google Translate, English

(I couldn't find a good thread for this one. Please let the mods know if you know a better place for it.)

 

This was a nice article in the journal of the Norwegian Nurses Organisation.

It's about an out-patient clinic for HIV and ME in a hospital in Kristiansand, Norway, where the patients themselves are part of the decision making concerning how things are run.

Sykepleien: Pasienter med hiv og ME styrer selv poliklinikken i Kristiansand
google translation: Patients with HIV and ME run the outpatient clinic in Kristiansand themselves

(One of the people in the project is called Fangen - this is translated by google as "the prisoner")

quotes:

- It is very rewarding work, and I have learned a lot. The work at the two outpatient clinics has many similarities. Many patients, both those with HIV and ME, perceive that they live with a stigmatized disease and may talk to only a few or no one else about their diagnosis. It can be exhausting and help to increase self-stigma, she says.

....

- Are there any pitfalls with user control?

- If you are not aware of the division of roles between the users and the health personnel, it can be challenging. Healthcare professionals must also be clear about what we want feedback from users, and listen to the evaluation the users bring. We must have good communication and dialogue with health professionals and users. It is also important that the offer is anchored in the management, says Aas.

- Not more time consuming, or that you lose power as a professional?

- An establishment process is always more time-consuming, until you can distribute the tasks and clarify the division of roles. After we got an experience consultant and distributed tasks, I experience having a little more time for patient-centered work. I have never experienced a loss of power as a professional, I have rather become more aware of my role as a nurse and learned to ask patients other questions.

 

MillionsMissing Denmark writes on their Facebook page that Dr Per Julin, who is the head of Stora Sköndal's ME clinic in Sweden, was invited to an online meeting 4 March 2021 with the Danish parliament's healthcare committee (or sub-committee? "Folketinget's Sundhedsudvalg"), to talk about ME.

Julin has now also sent the Danish Health Authority a letter:
https://me-foreningen.dk/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/NyRapport-Per-Julin-kopi.pdf

Some background info here:

 

Not ME specific, but this looks like good news for a lot of people including pwME

Funktionsrätt (the Swedish Disability Rights Federation) announced a couple of days ago that their plan to set up a disability rights bureau is moving forward, thanks to a generous grant.

https://www.pressmachine.se/pressrelease/view/funktionsrattsbyran-blir-verklighet-31163

 

Good news. Disabled and chronically ill people seriously need a union, or something like it. That it isn't already a thing is such a failure. Because of geographic distribution, it may be the largest constituency with zero political representation (other than children, I guess). There are so many of us and yet it is impossible for politicians to even bother thinking about us as we have no impact, we are too spread out.

But this can't be done through grassroots alone, precisely because of the lack of political influence. The system has to accept it, medicine has to support and defend it, both things that have yet to happen. But it would be a massive change, certainly far more beneficial than all the BPS ideology has wraught, or even the very best it could potentially achieve if it weren't intellectually and morally bankrupt in its execution.

 

UK only, I appreciate, but there are these options, https://disabilityunion.co.uk, which is something relatively new, and the established union, Unite, seems to have a specific section for disabled folks, https://www.unitetheunion.org/what-we-do/equalities/sectors/disabled-members/

 

Problem is political influence is directly related to money and mobilization. Disabled people are by definition poor and, well, poorly mobile. It can't be strictly grassroots, we don't have the resources or capacity for it. It would have to be half and half, grassroots but also have a sort of official status with public funding that overcomes the inherent limitations that are unique to our circumstances. But to achieve that we'd need... money and mobilization. Good old Catch-22.

Nothing like this exists so it would be a massive project, it's a massive shift from the normal way of doing things: if you want something done, do it. And it would take medicine to play a political role, which it does through inaction but doesn't want to take this active role, or doesn't see the need.

Sure would be a game-changer, though. I don't see how it could happen, but this is what is needed if the human rights of disabled and chronically ill people are ever to be respected.