Many thanks to Simon and to the organisers.

A couple of comments/questions in addition to those that I asked, and were answered, on Zoom.

1. Has what is listed in the slide below under “what we have discovered so far” been published in peer-reviewed journals? How much has been replicated?

View attachment 10741


2. Prof Carding talked about the importance of researching severe ME and the slide above refers to differences in the microbiome “signatures” between severe and mild/moderate ME. However, I note that the proposed FMT trial does not appear to include people with severe ME.

——

I hope there will be more of these Zoom presentations with other ME researchers in future. Excellent way for housebound patients to be able to engage. And much cheaper and more environmentally friendly than flying scientists around the world to attend conferences/symposiums. Maybe something S4ME could try to facilitate? @Andy
Thank you for that slide @Robert 1973. Super interesting! Good questions!
 
I hope there will be more of these Zoom presentations with other ME researchers in future. Excellent way for housebound patients to be able to engage. And much cheaper and more environmentally friendly than flying scientists around the world to attend conferences/symposiums. Maybe something S4ME could try to facilitate? @Andy
Well, I've got the technology, as I have used Zoom to connect with all the researchers I have spoken with in our Q&As, but unfortunately I don't have the spare time or energy at the moment to organise anything like this.
 
Sorry so late posting this!

2pm today Thursday 24th September 2020

ME/CFS in children and young people - an ideal approach compared with less than ideal approaches


This talk is especially relevant to families supporting young people and those not getting the support they need from schools and services. It will also be relevant to families supporting young people with long Covid symptoms.

With Dr Nigel Speight and the TYMES Trust charity.

Register here to participate to the event (via phone or online) and have the possibility to ask your questions directly to our guests. Or watch the live stream on our Facebook page


Article on Sheffield ME & Fibro Group Website:
https://www.sheffieldmegroup.co.uk/post/online-talk-me-cfs-in-children-and-young-people-dr-nigel-speight
 
Sheffield ME & Fibromyalgia Group invite you to:
Our very first OctoberFest!

It's a festival of 3 weeks of online activities from the 5th to the 23rd of October, preceding our AGM that will take place on the 22nd. What a great idea, I hear you say?

Activities include:
  • PIP tips
  • Murder Mystery
  • Mindfulness
  • "Why real food matters" workshop
  • Singing
  • Quiz
  • Play Reading
  • Writing Workshop with childrens author Berlie Doherty
  • "What is a trustee" workshop
  • And more!
Check out the full calendar of events and how to register here: https://www.sheffieldmegroup.co.uk/octoberfest2020

________________


More info:

Who is it for?


We have been organising this festival for the community of people suffering from ME/cfs, Fibromyalgia or/and long Covid symptoms. It is a time to get together and share good moments with people who understand your condition. This festival is free and open to non paid members, and we encourage you to become a member to take part in our future events.

How to join?

The whole festival is over Zoom, and you need to register (for free) to each session you wish to attend. The registration page along with more details about each activity can be found by clicking on the name of the activity in the calendar above. You are welcome to join for all of them!

The registration system is securing the sessions from external intrusions. You are in a safe space. Also, you do not need to turn your camera on during the activities, and you can even join by phone with the number provided in the registration's confirmation email.

Need help with Zoom?

Have a look at this short video we created for you. You do not need to download the Zoom app or to have a Zoom account to join us. If after clicking the link you get a pop-up "Open Zoom meetings" to open the app, just click Cancel and then further down click "Join from your browser" just like on the video.

If you feel unsure about joining an activity over Zoom, we will be happy to answer any questions you might have and we can even guide you through a private 'trial' meeting so you have a first experience of it.
 
First event happening at 2pm today.

PIP tips: How to successfully navigate the system. Mon 5th @2pm with benefits advisers Ellie and Sarah.

Click on the event name in the calendar on this page to register and get the link to the zoom session:
https://www.sheffieldmegroup.co.uk/octoberfest2020


Or register for another event!!
What a great idea and great content - I hope it's a huge success for you.
 
Sorry for posting this so late!

2:30pm Friday 20th November

Dr Diane O'Leary, philosopher and bioethicist is giving an online talk hosted by Sheffield ME & Fibromyalgia Group.

Seeing the big picture: ME, Fibromyalgia, MUS, FND and Long Covid

Our guest speaker Dr Diane O'Leary is a philosopher and bioethicist, currently a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science at University of Pittsburgh.

Information and registration here: https://www.sheffieldmegroup.co.uk/...icture-me-fibromyalgia-mus-fnd-and-long-covid
 
Last edited by a moderator:
From the description of the talk:
To secure health equity for women, Dr. O’Leary supports eliminating gender as a factor in psychosomatic diagnosis.
Surely the aim is to remove all those conditions listed from 'psychosomatic diagnosis', whether suffered by men or by women.

It'll be interesting to find out if she talks about her belief that ME=physical illness, CFS=mental illness.

As Andy says, Dr O'Leary has not retracted her suggestion, in a Rapid Response to a BMJ article recently, that CFS is a psychosomatic condition and ME is a physical condition, which is harmful nonsense. There is no evidence that her purported psychiatric condition 'CFS' exists in any patient. It's a figment of the imagination of the likes of Sharpe et al. who want to throw us under that particular bus.

I hope someone will ask her this afternoon to clarify this. I might watch it if I remember.
 
I ended up watching on FB.

She suggested that ME/CFS has been the heart of the development of psychosomatic medicine, with the PACE trial as the definitive trial not just to justify CBT/GET for ME/CFS, but for all conditions under the MUS umbrella, which she says is now being renamed as FND. I guess she's right about PACE in the sense that Crawley, Moss Morris and their ilk have moved on from PACE to use the same flawed methodology to try to 'prove' directive CBT works for IBS, and other conditions too.

She has a rather rosy view of how much of a game changer the new NICE guideline will be, I thought. As far as I can see it will probably take the next 30 years to completely undo the harm of the last 30 years, unless we get a difintive biomarker and effective biomedical treatment. It's only a guideline, it's not an instruction to ME clinics to shut down and a new system set up with doctors who understand ME.

Though she does observe that there is a lot of quiet pushing below the surface to bring long Covid into the psychosomatic field, so she acknowledged the battle isn't over.

She still has this odd blindspot about using CFS to name a psychosomatic condition and ME for the physical disease. I thought the chair of the discussion handled that very well, politely giving Dr O'Leary plenty of opportunity to row back from that, but instead she just dug herself deeper into the hole.

Her position now seems to be that doctors know nothing about ME or CFS so they need clarity, with CFS as a psych condition and ME as a physical disease. She claims that is what happens in the USA, which is simply not true.

She doesn't seem to recognise the possibility that there is no such thing as psychosomatic CFS. Fatigue in mental health disorders like depression is a real thing, so is fatigue resulting from difficult life circumstances, but that's not CFS, nor is it psychosomatic.

Nor does she acknowledge the harm that comes from publishing in the BMJ a letter redefining CFS as a psychiatic condition, when many all round the world with ME/CFS have CFS recorded in their medical notes and CFS is listed on the official disease naming systems as the same as ME. You can't just decide to rename something and throw millions of patients under a bus like this. It might be all right in philosophy to argue over and redefine terms, but it's not all right for real life patients.

There was rather too much dependence on Twitter chat as a basis for accusing ME patients of attacking people with FND, which I though was very unfair and unhelpful. Twitter should not be used as a basis for any sort of assumptions about whole groups of patients.

And she seemed to think it was up to patients to build bridges with the medical community including, I think she implied, those who have got it wrong - I can't see how we can do that with the likes of Wessely, White, Chalder, and their rejection of the draft NICE guideline.

Anyway, it was interesting to hear her perspective, but I didn't feel I gained any new insights.
 
Her position now seems to be that doctors know nothing about ME or CFS so they need clarity, with CFS as a psych condition and ME as a physical disease. She claims that is what happens in the USA, which is simply not true.

It sounds a bit like the true ME crowd, which seem to sometimes take the position that ME is real and that if CBT/GET work it must be because the patients have CFS which isn't a real illness like ME.

In my view, progress must be made with solid arguments, not this kind of talk about real and false ME or CFS or whatever.

An unfortunate side effect of this approach of trying to legitimize ME is that it agrees with the baseless psychiatric theories that depict an imaginary illness (without ever saying it outright).
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom