Paul Garner on Long Covid and ME/CFS - BMJ articles and other media.

Brainfog is a terrible name for significant cognitive disfunction. The term is increasingly being used by members of the general public who say they have brainfog too, describing being a bit 'foggy' or hungover. Brainfog makes cognitive disfunction sound vague and unmeasurable.
 
JohnTheJack said:
Straight after the news: Garner being Garner.
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It was quite an interesting listen, the interviewer was good, as were the three women who phoned in with their experiences. Garner ended up in a corner I thought, in a way that amused me, having to acknowledge the seriousness of Long Covid and say that more research is needed. And the interviewer said something along the lines of 'it's all very well if you can organise your life to accommodate the disease, but what about the people who have to keep working to meet the costs of living, and don't have people to support them?'.

To me, Garner did not come out of it well, he sounded very muddled. I think people who spend less time thinking about Long Covid might have believed Garner is an expert, but they would not have come away from that discussion thinking 'oh, Long Covid is the result of faulty illness beliefs and it's just a matter of staring down the barrel of the gun and pulling yourself together'. I think any BPS messages Garner might have wanted to get across were drowned out by the words from the others, who made it clear that this is a big and real problem that medicine does not yet have answers for.
 
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Many years ago experts in AIDS dementia said that there was an ME dementia which was transient. Dementia is the only way to describe some of our experiences like not being able to think how to get home or what carrot is. It is a much better word for even if it is frightening. We have minimised out disease over the years to our detriment. ME Association policy in the 80s was to not mention how serious the disease could be in case it worried new sufferers. (Though, in fairness, at this time it was believed that people would just give up if they were told they had a serious disease. My father was not told he had cancer for instance)

ME has measurable cognitive deficits which get worse as we become tired but they are not a symptom of tiredness. Fatigue and difficulty thinking are both from the same biological failure to produce enough energy not cause and effect.
 
dave30th said:
I'm sure it will be a talk just bursting with powerful manly thoughts.
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I've been trying the powerful manly thoughts protocol.

First I became a builder. Then I became a soldier. Then I became a biker. Then a police man. Then a cowboy and a Native American.

I was in the navy. I had fun staying at the YMCA. I went West, but the Petshop Boys were copying me and even they weren't having any luck.

I tried my hardest to be a macho, macho man. It just didn't work.
dave30th said:
He's retiring? Interesting.
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Note to the editor: It's spelled "tiring". ;)

Or maybe you meant he's being tiring again?
 
I watched some of this until I had to go and make dinner, and then the news about the queen was announced. At about 36 mins in he had a not very subtle dig at "patient activist groups" adding them to the list of types of people who spin and spread misinformation to hide the truth...so they can triumph....or something. I wonder which patient activist groups he was referring to? He then spoke admiringly of his "friend and colleague" from Norway Vegard Wyller...the author of the retracted and republished music therapy study. https://bmjpaedsopen.bmj.com/content/4/1/e000620ret. I expect there was more about patient activists later, but I missed it. It was recorded so we can all check it out later.
 
Caroline Struthers said:
types of people who spin and spread misinformation to hide the truth...
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Surely there can't be many people who could keep pace (no pun intended) with this lot --- spin and spread misinformation to hide the truth... covers it pretty accurately. Surely he should be pointing out the strategies they've used and telling the ill/those representing them to keep up/learn from the masters!
 
think this might be an ad for his job:

Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine seeks Professor/Senior Lecturer of Evidence Synthesis in Global Health - Liverpool, UK
Cochrane News
2 weeks 5 days ago
Location: Liverpool, UK
Contract type: Permanent / Full Time
Closing date: Fri, Sep 30, 2022

The Role:
This leadership role is for a highly experienced scientist in evidence synthesis who will lead the further development of evidence synthesis, as part of the Global Health Trials and Synthesis Unit, and across the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and its partners.

The Department of Clinical Sciences is a global leader in evidence synthesis providing an excellent platform for translational research from concept through discovery and clinical trials to evidence synthesis, teaching, policy change and eventual health impact.
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https://www.cochrane.no/aggregator/sources/1?page=0
 
1st speaker Paul Garner: "he loves controversy...........any chance of getting on the television, he's there".
2nd speaker slide "Are academic institutions corrupt" published in the Lancet Vol 342
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PII0140-6736(93)91738-8/fulltext
(need registration to access).
Paul Garner said the editorial on the article was written by him.
Also mentions this paper
Identifying and managing problematic trials: A research integrity assessment tool for randomized controlled trials in evidence synthesis
Stephanie Weibel, Maria Popp, Stefanie Reis, Nicole Skoetz, Paul Garner, Emma Sydenham
First published: 29 August 2022
https://doi.org/10.1002/jrsm.1599
Abstract
Evidence synthesis findings depend on the assumption that the included studies follow good clinical practice and results are not fabricated or false. Studies which are problematic due to scientific misconduct, poor research practice, or honest error may distort evidence synthesis findings. Authors of evidence synthesis need transparent mechanisms to identify and manage problematic studies to avoid misleading findings. As evidence synthesis authors of the Cochrane COVID-19 review on ivermectin, we identified many problematic studies in terms of research integrity and regulatory compliance. Through iterative discussion, we developed a research integrity assessment (RIA) tool for randomized controlled trials for the update of this Cochrane review. In this paper, we explain the rationale and application of the RIA tool in this case study.
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https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jrsm.1599?af=R

Paul Garner starts speaking around 19:00
 
his personal experience of covid starts 57:00
57:24
talk a little bit before i finish about the personal experience with covid as as as david says um you know i i suddenly
57:32
uh uh uh i didn't think i was going to be unwell with kobe i got very unwell and then the symptoms persisted and it
57:39
was very weird experience and i wrote about it in the british medical journal
57:45
and it was at a time when people were just recognizing this post-viral syndrome and a lot of people
57:51
were feeling this and thought they were going mad so it was you know up until that point i'd really
57:58
sort of uh despite what what david was saying i you know in the reviews i tend to try
58:03
and stay in the background but here it it was it was necessary to use the platform
58:09
of my established position to talk about this um and
58:15
and then i recovered by using ways to rethink how i interpret the
58:20
symptoms very unusual illness and using uh gradually
58:26
um sort of starting to increase my activity again uh uh where's helen helen
58:32
uh we were we went through all this together didn't we um and and so
58:37
that's fine when you're sick you get on all the newspapers talking about sickness and then when you get
58:43
recover everybody drops you and as a result of recovering the long covey doctors
58:49
attacked me because they said i was saying it's all in the mind that i wasn't i was saying
58:55
you can use the way you think about things to to to tackle the symptoms
59:00
and i was there's been credible death threats to me it's ju and i thank the school for their support
59:07
during these times although yes i mean uh
59:14
jeremy's saying well paul i wouldn't worry about that picture of a machine gun that's been sent to you because they
59:20
haven't got a magazine in any way the bullets are very expensive in this country
59:27
that's jeremy right so uh uh yes that was very reassuring and
59:33
of course um uh that my friend in alliton road um uh
59:39
asked me the other day about whether she's a butcher and uh she said have you
59:45
had any of those death threats we were talking about this the other day i said no she said if they come back again tell
59:50
them there's a hormonal butcher ready to attack them
59:56
so it's great really good support from people and i thank the institution for that but it is another form of bullying
1:00:03
um so in summary we need to make sure uh professionals and the public realize
1:00:10
the value in unconflicted evidence cochran's mission of a single high
1:00:16
quality review updated periodically remains core to science and decision
1:00:22
making must be kept going bullying in science has become normalized and particularly during covid
1:00:30
we must address this and and institutional responses need to help people that are in this position and it
1:00:36
needs unpacking
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Yeah is it just the transcript that makes him sound incoherent, or maybe he didn't quite recover fully? Because this is a word salad with hefty "huhs" as toppings and a meandering of extra sour vinaigrette.
 
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