Buzzfeed - A Controversial Therapy For ME Has Led To Claims Of Harassment And Pseudoscience

[CFSTheBear]

A Controversial Therapy For ME Has Led To Claims Of Death Threats, Harassment, And Pseudoscience

Buzzfeed journalist Tom Chivers looks into the SMILE trial and the surrounding controversy.

Chivers has spoken to Phil Parker, David Tuller, Jonathan Edwards, and several patients who have gone through the the Lightning Process.

The process, or its practitioners, have made some dramatic claims about its effectiveness. At least one practitioner’s website used to say that it could “help you to completely recover permanently" from CFS/ME with “no possibility of relapse”, and that patients can “achieve full recovery no matter how severe your symptoms are”. Those claims are now gone but are visible on web.archive.org, and were recorded at the time by the charity Invest in ME.

Parker’s own websites apparently used to make similar claims. According to the charity 25% ME Group, Parker’s website once said the Lightning Process allowed patients “to automatically, easily and effectively stop those thought patterns” that he said were “always present” in ME. And lightningprocess.co.uk, which was described as Parker’s personal website, said it contained “stories of those who inspired me with how they used the mind body connection to get over ME/CFS, MS, Depression, Anxiety, Chronic Pain and Eating Disorders and much more”.

Full article available here.

 

[Countrygirl]

@jstash You just beat me to it!

A very interesting article indeed.

elsewhere it links to a glowing report by the TV presenter and Childline founder Esther Rantzen, who says it rescued her daughter from 14 years of the disease. (Rantzen also used it herself to prepare for her appearance on the reality show I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.)

The author obviously doesn't know that Esther's daughter never in fact recovered, but just tried to hide her symptoms, not of ME, but of cealiac's disease.Such a cruel thing to do to a child!

Do we understand from the article that Dorothy Bishop is jumping ship and distancing herself from EC after her inital support?

Dorothy Bishop, a professor of developmental neuropsychology at the University of Oxford, told BuzzFeed News she was also concerned about the “wisdom of running a trial [into something] that doesn’t seem to have much scientific basis and is commercial, because if you find a result you end up giving huge kudos to something that may not deserve it”.

 

[anni66]

Impiryant multi tweet from Jen Brea coming off back of this

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/947170518825758720