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Walitt Invited Shorter and Nath Approved Him

A.B.

Senior Member
Messages
3,780
Nath is not committed to building trust with patients. Very bad.

And Walitt is a liar. I can't recall the source but he made statements that were clearly meant to make us believe that he viewed this illness as biological. Then he goes on and invites the biggest proponent of the "mass hysteria silly non-illness" point of view.
 

sarah darwins

Senior Member
Messages
2,508
Location
Cornwall, UK
Just a reminder (from that post) of what we're dealing with in Shorter:

“What is required to convert these inchoate and nonspecific symptoms into an illness is an act of belief, a psychic epidemic, in other words. And my feeling as a historian is that this is what we are now dealing with in the ME/CFS movement.”

FFS, I was sick for 13 years before I knowingly had a conversation with another person with the same illness. For 12 years I thought I had what a doctor had called a post-viral condition and believed that it would wear off in time. I read zero about this or any other illness. I trusted my GP and left it at that. So how did I catch this psychic epidemic?

Shorter has an obsession with the "movement" — probably less than one per cent of people with the illness — and is unable to distinguish between someone with ME/CFS and someone who campaigns on ME/CFS.

I wasn't sure it was possible to know less than nothing about something until I came across Shorter. Why is the NIH even answering this man's calls, let alone inviting him in? He's a willfully ignorant menace. The quotations from him on that blog post alone should disqualify him from participation in any research.
 

Comet

I'm Not Imaginary
Messages
693
Nath is not committed to building trust with patients. Very bad.

And Walitt is a liar. I can't recall the source but he made statements that were clearly meant to make us believe that he viewed this illness as biological. Then he goes on and invites the biggest proponent of the "mass hysteria silly non-illness" point of view.

It's from this post:
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/inde...ened-at-todays-tdw-meeting.47062/#post-769979
I had lunch with J. Mark VanNess, PhD, of the Workwell 2 day CPET fame. He told me that Dr. Walitt pulled together a group of ME/CFS experts, whose names you all know and respect, to advise him on various ME/CFS topics. They had their first meeting shortly before the TDW meeting. Mark said that the first thing out of Dr. Walitt's mouth was something like, "Mark, this is physiologic. We're going to solve this." Their meetings will be ongoing.

Wallitt's comment always seemed like he purposely planted it, to me.
 
Last edited:

Solstice

Senior Member
Messages
641
Ok, so from what I remember from the student/patient that went to the meeting is she had a nice chat afterwards with I think Walitt, who reassured her about how they are viewing this disease. Turns out he was the one that invited the nutter. Can you get anymore two-faced than that?
 

JaimeS

Senior Member
Messages
3,408
Location
Silicon Valley, CA
Ok, so from what I remember from the student/patient that went to the meeting is she had a nice chat afterwards with I think Walitt, who reassured her about how they are viewing this disease. Turns out he was the one that invited the nutter. Can you get anymore two-faced than that?

At the time, he said something along the lines of, "that must've been very difficult for you to hear."

To hear -- you know, because it challenges our belief systems, not because Shorter spews content that is self-serving, or ignorant, or illogical. It sounded like the use of a standard psychiatry technique : empathize and acknowledge the patient's emotions, but be cautious in order to avoid validating or committing to their (mistaken) worldview.