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Facts of the HHS/IOM contract

Nielk

Senior Member
Messages
6,970
HHS/IOM Contract Facts:


HHS has signed a contract with the IOM to re-define ME/CFS.

HHS is spending approximately one million dollars to do so.

HHS refuses to adopt the CCC in defiance of 50 experts, 171 advocates and countless patients.

The contract is not what the CFSAC recommendation called for.

HHS lied when they said they are canceling the action to contract with the IOM.....just to change their mind a week later.

IOM will have non-experts on the panel.

IOM has re-named GWI to CMI and considers CFS a psychogenic disease needing treatments of anti-depressants, CBT and GET.

Government contracts can be broken and canceled.

There was no full and open competition in attaining the HHS/IOM contract.
 
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Nielk

Senior Member
Messages
6,970
Please post here other true facts so far about the contract that can be added to the bullet point list above. In this way, we can have an easy quick read/reference of facts.
 

Andrew

Senior Member
Messages
2,513
Location
Los Angeles, USA
The HHS contract doesn't include validity testing. There is no requirement to test a new criteria and see if it can actually differentiate ME/CFS patients from other illnesses. Therefore, any new criteria will NOT be an evidence-based criteria. It will only be an evidence-based hypothesis. The HHS has repeatedly said that any change we suggest to them must be evidence-based. Yet, here they are developing their own criteria, and it will have less testing than the CCC.
 

justinreilly

Senior Member
Messages
2,498
Location
NYC (& RI)
Nice.

Let me nitpick on one confusing point. You say that IoM considers CFS to be a somatic illness. Somatic means 'bodily' or physical (not psychological). IoM actually considers CFS to be a psychosomatic (i.e. mind-body) illness. (at the risk of getting more confusing, I prefer the term 'psychogenic' (i.e. caused by the mind) illness, since it is more accurate than psychosomatic (since all illnesses have some mind component and some physical component))
 

Nielk

Senior Member
Messages
6,970
Nice.

Let me nitpick on one confusing point. You say that IoM considers CFS to be a somatic illness. Somatic means 'bodily' or physical (not psychological). IoM actually considers CFS to be a psychosomatic (i.e. mind-body) illness. (at the risk of getting more confusing, I prefer the term 'psychogenic' (i.e. caused by the mind) illness, since it is more accurate than psychosomatic (since all illnesses have some mind component and some physical component))

Thanks, Justin.