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

Maureen Hanson sums up the whole sorry saga:

"The BMJ article from Paul Garner shows the danger of assuming that the course of long COVID will be the same as ME/CFS. One thing that does occur in both illnesses is false attribution of the causes of recovery" [the meme in the tweet is good, too]
 
rvallee said:
I'd say most of the blame is on BMJ for this. They lend their credibility to this, labelling it as opinion doesn't change that. Sure, they published his other texts, but Garner was not making strong claims, certainly not pushing his experience as something that should be generalized. He was certainly not pushing the medical equivalent of The Secret, promising a quick recovery out of something that is potentially very harmful.

BMJ is continuing to lower the standards in medical publishing, at this point almost nonexistent, frankly. They didn't have to publish this, at least not without serious edits. BMJ may be sued for this in the future, if people follow this advice because it came from a credible medical publisher. Would they publish someone's account of curing Crohn's disease by drinking aged urine? I doubt that, but both claims are equally farcical.
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I just wonder if they had a DR who had been through chemo then took up LP and claimed it was the LP that cured them whether the BMJ would have published it. Somehow I think they would have intervened. Personally Paul Garner comes across as having lost rational thinking on his situation and therefor should have remained unpublished.
 
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I wonder when the BMJ decided to become the newspaper equivalent of the daily mail? Was it always like this? It seems to have deteriorated recently from what was a very low base. Sadly it’s pretty much anything I read in it nowadays.

my personal view is that regardless of the quality of the journal he is publishing in, this guy needs to be accountable for his actions as a professional. We should stop trying to apply pop psychology to understand or allow for his actions. He is a patient as well but as far as I’m concerned he is just another snake oil salesman whether that’s because he is gullible or not is neither here nor there.

he has made non-evidenced claims in his professional capacity and is publishing in a professional journal (I use the word loosely). This is very different to a patient mouthing off on Twitter or whatever.

His actions stand on their own. I’m afraid he has abused his position to get airtime for his crackpot ideas and that is unforgivable.

he is unprofessional by the evidence.

builders who construct something with substandard materials are no different...other than they can be held to account professionally and appropriate punishment metered out to discourage them and others. We don’t concern ourselves that the builder was having a bad day or wasn’t thinking straight so why give this guy any allowance?
 
strategist said:
I read that he was on the BBC this morning, talking about how he recovered from CFS.

Seems like the anti-ME/CFS propaganda has started.
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Wonko said:
He was, with everyone's favourite person - Clare Gerada.

I don't know when it started but the segment ended at 8.45am, on the BBCs 'Breakfast' program this morning.
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FOR FUCK'S SAKE !!!!!!!

God this shit is depressing.
 
Just wondering if everyone feels there is a differance between his recent bmj opinion piece and his previous ones. Were they all unprofessional? Were some within the bmj opinion brief and others not?
 
strategist said:
I read that he was on the BBC this morning, talking about how he recovered from CFS.

Seems like the anti-ME/CFS propaganda has started.
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He didn't recover from cfs because he was never diagnosed with it. The only thing he can claim is that he recovered from covid/long covid. I could say I was diagnosed with celiac disease and recovered from it but I never did either.
 
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