Physicians and their so called ME conference ...

As many people might know the Royal College of physicians or whatever they are called are launching a conference at the end of April about CFS/ME, well at least they say they do. If you look at the programm and the list of speakers you'll soon realise that you have arrived at the Malingering conference for delusional psychiatrists.

But what is new after the NICE Giddiliner was launched a few months ago. It must be really great as a psychiatrist to be at the centre of attention even though you are talking about something you have no Fukuda clue about, furthermore it is a neurological illness, well at least it was when we talked about ME, and then you are talking to physicians, so not neurologists etc.

And I can understand their interest, ELEVEN million and counting, so they must hurry to GET a piece of the cake.

Now we have been saying many things for years but one of them is how appallingly bad the CBT-ism articles are. Apparently that is the norm in medicine, yes that is right.

And let me just quote Jeanne Lenzer, a medical investigative journalist from one of the latests BMJ's:

"Firstly, there’s the problem of publication bias, the tendency for positive studies to get published and negative studies to be filed away in a drawer. In the case of antidepressants, a 2008 analysis by Erick Turner and colleagues published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that only 8% of antidepressant trials with negative findings were reported as negative, while positive trials were reported as such 97% of the time."

So studies which say a medication or CBT for that matter do not work are not being reported ..... they are destroyed so that no one will be able to read them....

She continues by saying, "a 1999 study showing that in five top medical journals the authors’ conclusions as stated in journal abstracts either were not supported or were contradicted by data given in the body of the article in 18% to 68% of articles," and yes, my brain automatically thinks about the CBT articles and all the horribilities and mistakes in those.......

It also means that the editors of those magazines were either asleep or on the golf courses or both.....

But there are more interesting things down the ME horizon, you see one stress doctor is saying there is something wrong with a part of our brain, the amygdala, and what do we need this tiny area for, well we have found from animal research that "Monkeys without amygdalas have difficulty learning to associate a light-signal with an electric shock -- and also have difficulty associating a neutral stimulus with a food reward. It has been suggested that the amygdala functions to associate sensation with reward or punishment."

Or as WIKIPEDIA said: it performs "a primary role in the processing and memory of emotional reactions."

So yes, the basis of ME as prescribed by Dr Ramsay or the Canadian ME Guidelines; goodness gracious ME.

But he has more up his sleeve, he mentions that his work is not peer reviewed, a bit like the CBT articles, as the peer reviewer is professor CBT himself, but at least this doc says so, but then he can talk the abnormal brain part back to normal, now, where have I heard that nonsense before ???

Reminds me of ....