Edward Shorter reviews SO'S book It's All in your Head

[aaron_c]

Wowwww look what I found!

This reminds me of something Harry Potter's Rita Skeeter would write. Cheerful, informative, yet unreasonably nasty and containing only enough truth to make it believable to the uninformed.

Granted, the author probably just read the book and wrote the report. So the article, at least, is probably not as malicious as I might have just suggested.

people literally thought that AIDS wasn't caused by a virus, but by cultural shame.

Still exists. Still gets published.

Seeing as how they are labeling the Human Immunodeficiency Virus as psychosomatic, perhaps in their minds psychosomatic simply denotes a disease whose symptoms can be effected to some degree by psychology (so...nearly every disease).

Obviously, the proponents of the broader psychosomatic view (assuming they exist) have no idea the harm they do by conflating the two definitions. To nearly everyone, physicians included, psychosomatic means "it's all in your head."

Maybe the authors of the articles you point to are really so nearsighted as to believe that HIV is entirely a psychological disease. But I have to wonder if there isn't an explanation requiring slightly less obtusity on their parts.

 

[JaimeS]

and a few other things I am not at liberty to disclose.

Such as a willing suspension of disbelief?

Activating the super power also involves some chanting of the word "s-ohhhmmm-aticize" while visualizing the illness to which you aspire.

....this bears remarkable similarity to The Secret. Wish hard enough, and what you visualize will manifest in reality!

Personally, I've always genuinely and wholeheartedly wished the Universe would bring me a complex, chronic, multi-system disease for my birthday.

"Fibromyalgia is more prevalent in countries where there are greater disability and insurance benefits or where there is higher cultural acceptance"

You mean, it's diagnosed more often in places that know it exists? Le shock! Le surprise! And other such exclamations!

So basically, this guy takes money to be an expert witness in insurance litigation. Suddenly all becomes clear.

This reminds me of something Harry Potter's Rita Skeeter would write. Cheerful, informative, yet unreasonably nasty and containing only enough truth to make it believable to the uninformed.

...accurate, @aaron_c .

I would love someone to start up a tongue-in-cheek column at #MEAction writing as Rita Skeeter, or some non-copyright-infringement-protected pseud... could be pretty hysterical.

perhaps in their minds psychosomatic simply denotes a disease whose symptoms can be effected to some degree by psychology (so...nearly every disease).

Absolutely. At least one of those articles was talking about psychosomatic effects on AIDS progression, but if you scroll down it literally says "AIDS is a psychosomatic illness" in black and white, and goes on to say what people have said about ME: it's a 'hit and run' with the virus that wouldn't affect people who had a strong immune system undamaged by stress.

Like EBV, apparently there are plenty who have / carry HIV and are Just Fine, even w/o treatment. It's the stress that makes HIV fatal. That appears to be the message of the first few pages; I did not read any more after that.

-J

 

[Comet]

If anyone cares to visit his personal Homepage:

http://www.dredwardshorter.com/

Some of the services that he offers:

SERVICES
CONSULTING IN LITIGATION AND CORPORATE PROBLEM-SOLVING.

Litigation and corporate problem-solving? Wonder if the corporate problem is called sick or injured worker?

Disgusting.

So basically, this guy takes money to be an expert witness in insurance litigation. Suddenly all becomes clear.

Why is it that no one see this type of thing but us? It happens again and again and again... and we're the ones being called delusional. WTF???!!! I really didn't sign on for all this crap, I just want my life back.

 

[Comet]

and a few other things I am not at liberty to disclose.

Such as a willing suspension of disbelief?

Pshaw!

 

[JaimeS]

Why is it that no one see this type of thing but us?

Without a background in logic or an insistently skeptical nature, I think most people agree with whatever they hear the most often... or the loudest.

What is their incentive to research or dig deeper? Not their problem.

 

[Kati]

Why is it that no one see this type of thing but us? It happens again and again and again... and we're the ones being called delusional. WTF???!!! I really didn't sign on for all this crap, I just want my life back.

I blame him for the lack of action on the ME front in Ontario and perhaps all over Canada.

 

[Comet]

Without a background in logic or an insistently skeptical nature, I think most people agree with whatever they hear the most often... or the loudest.

Let's get LOUDER!!

 

[sarah darwins]

Why is it that no one see this type of thing but us? It happens again and again and again... and we're the ones being called delusional. WTF???!!!

Bewildering, isn't it. And the guy gets invited to write blog posts at the BMJ. As you say, WTF???!!!

Let's get LOUDER!!

Yes.

 

[aaron_c]

From this link

Wowwww look what I found!

Sufferers of chronic fatigue, much like early AIDS patients, become advocates when they fail to find help from traditional medicine. CFS patients are extremely well informed on their illness, aware of current research and scientific publications. Local and national CFIDS newsletters are filled with reports on cutting-edge research.

But Shorter says this is just another characteristic of psychosomatic illness. To escape the taint of psychological illness, he said, sufferers ''all cite medical information very proudly."

I laughed out loud when I read this.

Let me get this straight: We are lazy freeloaders who have made up an illness in order to avoid hard work but who do enough research to be more informed about our made-up illness than most doctors in spite of nearly zero economic incentive to do so.

 

[Kati]

Old doctors and people like Sorter feel threatened by the change in patients having access to all kinds of information/ medical research. I'd say in general the medical professon is feeling threatened by patients like us who know more than them.

 

[Large Donner]

Shorter really believes it's 'easy' to generate a fever and swollen lymph nodes with his thoughts?

Has he tried it?

No doubt he would argue that it would work with him, he doesn't have the underlying biology to make it happen.

 

[Large Donner]

In our own time, said Shorter, statistics show that people are working harder and longer than in the past.

 

[GreyOwl]

Old doctors and people like Sorter feel threatened by the change in patients having access to all kinds of information/ medical research. I'd say in general the medical professon is feeling threatened by patients like us who know more than them.

The insurance doctor I stupidly took my child to see proudly boasted in his letter that he consulted a university library and could not find a reference for a very specific, much research trigger. I ran a query on pubmed finding literally hundreds, including research from the institution itself. Apparently his opinion is worth more than mine

 

[Large Donner]

Fibromyalgia is more prevalent in countries where there are greater disability and insurance benefits

Insurance claims are higher in countries that have an insurance industry.

Illnesses are diagnosed more often in places where people have access to a doctor.

Statistics show where there are no doctors less illnesses are recorded.

More people speak French in France than in England this proves French is not a real language.

 

[Comet]

Statistics show where there are no doctors less illnesses are recorded

 

[alex3619]

Old doctors and people like Sorter feel threatened by the change in patients having access to all kinds of information/ medical research. I'd say in general the medical professon is feeling threatened by patients like us who know more than them.

My opinion of doctors keeps going down and down and down. Doctors are still my heroes, but that is one here, one there. Its not necessary for doctors to be so consistently wrong about so much, its the general medical culture and support systems that are failing. As the public becomes more aware the profession is going to come under greater and greater scrutiny, with greater and greater public awareness of medical failures.

Doctors are intelligent and educated people, but that education is lacking in many respects, and is not properly updated. The notion of a general doctor as a reliable authority figure is done. I suspect most who are well informed know that.

The medical profession is too entrenched in defending the status quo, rather than facing up to the challenges. They seem, to me, to be more involved in shoring up image and power rather than moving to best approaches to treat patients and pushing the science in fruitful ways. Those who stand out, who get my attention, are the doctors who buck these trends. Pioneers, the people who forge tomorrow, are always in the minority.

 

[JaimeS]

More people speak French in France than in England this proves French is not a real language.

As I've always been convinced is the case.

Doctors are intelligent and educated people, but that education is lacking in many respects, and is not properly updated. The notion of a general doctor as a reliable authority figure is done. I suspect most who are well informed know that.

Well... they figure it out about one doctor's appointment after they get sick with something more serious than an upper respiratory tract infection... unless they get someone really good at the job. And these people do exist!

Those who stand out, who get my attention, are the doctors who buck these trends. Pioneers, the people who forge tomorrow, are always in the minority.

Unfortunately, they seem to frequently face some kind of legal trouble for their efforts.

Peripherally related...

Doing research for Jen's TED talk, I delved into the ancient conception of epilepsy, expecting to find talk of demons or possession. Both Hippocrates and Avicenna stated unequivocally that epilepsy was a disease of the brain, that it had no special or supernatural cause (Hippocrates: it is contracted as other diseases are contracted, and has the potential to be cured as other diseases are cured.) Avicenna and Hippocrates both stated (in the medical language of the time) that it could be caused by hypoperfusion / lack of circulation to the brain.

Fast-forward a thousand years and it's possession. A bit further and it's psychosomatic.

There are always people happy to travel backwards.

-J

 

[Sean]

....this bears remarkable similarity to The Secret.

That is exactly what it is. Magical morality-play soaked bullshit non-thinking as favoured by the snake-oil merchants and the gullible.

So he does believe in superpowers.

Is it a cancer?
Is it a broken bone?
Is it a defective gene?

No! It's Somatisation Man!

He's everywhere, he's everywhere!

 

[Keith Geraghty]

the first day you ever meet a patient as a medical student you are told to "listen to the patient - they will tell you whats wrong with them". Unless the patient has some kind of psychosis - and even here too - the patient will most likely tell you whats wrong with them. Somewhere along the line, perhaps Charcot or Freud, helped convince medics that there has to be more than the obvious. This edict has remained in the background, yet in medical training doctors are still told to listen to the patient - yet Shorter and others, eg OSullivan have bought into the fantasy that "theres more than meets the eye" - theres something else, that the clever doctor can work out if they look beyond the patient's presented symptoms. Here the thesis is to ignore the patient and impose a medical model on the illness the patient is presenting.

This is dangerous and breeches an important long standing tenet of medicine - listening and believing the patient.

 

[chipmunk1]

Some tweets of the Professor. We learn that Insulin coma is an effective therapy and that ME is a delusion.

"""Dr Edward Shorter ‏@DrEdwardShorterc Feb 29
http://www.medicalrepublic.com.au/scratching-death-morgellons-disease/ …
Robert Kaplan's perceptive piece on Morgellons Syndrome, or delusional skin infestation, which is comparable to CFS."""

Dr Edward Shorter‏@DrEdwardShorter5 Dec 2015
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/how-everyone-became-depressed/201512/why-don-t-doctors-want-hear-about-psychosomatic-problems…
Psychosomatic problems are as common as grass. Yet medicine deals poorly with them. Here's why.

Dr Edward Shorter‏@DrEdwardShorter19 Nov 2015
http://inhn.org/controversies/shridhar-sharma-insulin-coma-treatment-facts-and-controversies.html…
Insulin coma was actually an effective treatment. Here is a paper on its history. See also Shorter, various refs.
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