Weʼre raising £35,000 to Continue Vital ME Research, Keith Geraghty, 2021

Sly Saint

Sly Saint

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I am an unsalaried research fellow who relies on grant income. I am seeking funding to continue researching Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at the University of Manchester. Myself and colleagues have made signficant headway over the past few years but we need your support to do even more.

I am seeking crowdfunding to publish papers from exisitng projects and to do more work on the following topics:

- looking at diagnosis, care and treatment

- biases in RCTs of CBT and GET (taking on Bad Science)

- Bodily Distress Syndrome (why DDS is a problematic illness label and why ME/CFS is not a BDS)

- Medically Unexplained Symptoms (why ME/CFS should not be considered an MUS)

PROGRESS SO FAR

Myself and the team I have put together have not been afraid to take on bad science and misconceptions about ME/CFS. We have focused on research that improves diagnosis and treatment of ME/CFS. We are also working on educating colleagues and clinicians about the disease. To-date we have made significant progress:

We showed that CBT and Graded Exercise Therapy were not effective treatments for ME/CFS.

We analysed patient surveys and found Pacing helped patients most and GET worsened symptoms.

We highightled methodological flaws and biases in the PACE Trial.

We identified theoretical flaws and inconsistencies in the CBT Model of ME/CFS.

We invesigated the views and experiences of patients with severe ME/CFS and we presented a report of our findings to NICE UK as part of their review.

I published over 20 papers and articles on ME/CFS.

WHERE WILL THE MONEY GO?

All funds donated will be used on research and nothing will be spent on admin. It costs around £50,000 to salary 1 research fellow per year and with on-costs and extras this can be even higher, thus I believe we are very cost effective at doing ME-CFS reserach. £35,000 will allow me to dedicate considerable time days to work only on ME/CFS. Any additional funding received will be used to contract hire additional research staff or will be moved over to the following year to continue our work.

COMMUNICATING WHAT WE DO

I wish to use some of the donated funds to set up a dedicated website that will host media, videos and podcasts discussing our work and much more, along with links to our ongoing projects and publications. We wish to make our research findings much more accesible to all and to engage more with people living with ME/CFS and other researchers and health professionals.

Thank you all for your continuing support!

Keith
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https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/keithgeraghty
 
Very worthwhile, thanks to Keith Geraghty for excellent work.

More work is needed even if the new NICE guidelines stay as per the draft. With MUS, IAPT, and other horrors looming over us, we need all the research we can get to show how useless these things are for people with ME/CFS.

I will be donating and hope others with funds to spare will do so too.
 
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Great news. I hope people in the community who are able to will support Keith as with Dave he has done a lot towards highlighting the issues and I feel it is important for his work to continue without having to be reliant on sporadic grants.
 
Some tweets he posted along with the appeal today on Twitter:.

Background: some of you may not know that I am an unsalaried researcher, I rely on grant income. We have had no grant income for the past 6 months. I can work in other fields and leave ME/CFS research but I would like to continue doing what I do, I believe I can make a difference.

2nd I have expended considerable time over the past few months applying for grants and funding; this has delayed publication of important papers & stopped me bringing new data papers to press. If I can secure enough funding I can do more and spend less time chasing funding.

To all givers, videos, blogs/podcasts to come - I will begin work on a new website that use to engage more about the projects I have set up that are ongoing and new work I will be doing. Details to follow.
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A tweet from a number of days ago from Keith.

"Crowdfunding has passed 40% of the new target; even if total goal isn't reached, I can tell you all funds donated so far will allow me to stay in ME/CFS research, rather than leaving this area, thus the work can continue on into this year - thank you all."

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OK I am in, FYI did not even realise this was going on.

Maybe I do kind of live under a rock and have the attention span of a gnat but might be worth publicising a bit.

Also I am quietly wondering why someone like ME Association or A4ME have not taken him under their wing or at least expressed an endorsement.
 
boolybooly said:
OK I am in, FYI did not even realise this was going on.

Maybe I do kind of live under a rock and have the attention span of a gnat but might be worth publicising a bit.

Also I am quietly wondering why someone like ME Association or A4ME have not taken him under their wing or at least expressed an endorsement.
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The UK ME Association did give him £20,000 previously.
The Irish ME/CFS Association is a lot smaller but gave him €3000 in 2020.
The members of the Irish ME/CFS Association are now voting on how they would like €35,000 from our research fund be spent and he is one of the options (it is not an all or nothing thing).

For what it's worth, every day for the last month or so I have retweeted a message for people encourage people to donate and/or share it. Of course, only some people are on Twitter.
I did also share it on Facebook, Instagram and elsewhere.
It would be great if more people could share it around.
 
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