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New MEGA study website (30 November 2016)

A.B.

Senior Member
Messages
3,780
Is psychosomatic medicine a sort of pyramid scheme scam? One generation tricks the next into enrolling into classes that supposedly teach psychosomatic medicine... after completing education, the victims realise that it's all bullshit. Some abandon the field, others stay because they've invested too much. The ones that stay end up mass producing these completely worthless papers while pretending they're doing useful work. Then some think that they might as well earn more while they're doing it, and soon another overhyped therapy is born and training courses are being sold to the next generation.
 
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Messages
2,125
You only have to look at all the current stuff on the roll out of IAPT (see MUS,MUPs) across the NHS to see that when they refer to CFS they are in fact talking about chronic fatigue. Under the guise of making 'mental illness more acceptable and less stigmatised' they are sweeping up a host of illnesses with physical symptoms that they deem psychosomatic and in effect classing them as 'mental illness'. ME being a prime target.
This is how EC and her pals are managing to spin it.
 

Cheshire

Senior Member
Messages
1,129
New post:
Prof Carmine Pariante: Understanding the role of inflammation in ME/CFS

For for the past 20 years I have conducted research on how and why increased activity of the immune and inflammatory systems is involved in the regulation of mood and fatigue. We all know how awful we feel when we experience increased inflammation in the body, because of high fever during an infection or a bout of an inflammatory disorder such as rheumatoid arthritis: we feel physically and mentally tired.


While these milder symptoms are miles away from the debilitating, enduring mental and physical fatigue that characterise ME/CFS, I believe that shared mechanisms related to the immune system could be dysfunctional in all these different conditions, albeit with much stronger and abnormal changes in the ME/CFS group.

http://www.megaresearch.me.uk/2017/01/23/prof-pariante-understanding-the-role-of-inflammation/

For those who don't know Pariante, he's the Head of the Stress, Psychiatry and Immunology laboratory (SPI-Lab), at King's College London...
 
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2,158
Why do I feel cynical about this article?

Is it because I see the words Kings College London and Psychiatry in his job title? (Wessely and Chalder are at Kings, I think).

Or is it because he has worked on fatigue for 20 years, but still seems to see ME as part of a spectrum of fatigue conditions, and talks about regulation of mood and fatigue?

Or is it because he unquestioningly supports MEGA?

Or is it because he 'believes' shared mechanisms... That word 'believe' raises alarm bells for me. I'd much rather he talked about evidence.

Or is it because he claims MEGA will make 'exponential' advances in knowledge?

Or is it because it's too vague and doesn't tell us anything...

Or am I completely wrong and he's one of the good guys. Please tell me he is...
 
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13,774
Dolphin posted this in another thread:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1169912504863162_comment.pdf

Reviewer: Carmine Pariante
Reviewer's report:
This is an interesting review and it will be helpful in clarifying the simplistic assumption and ME/CFS and chronic inflammation are the same process. It s thorough from a biological and mechanistical point of view, however I would require ( as a Major Compulsory revision) that ME/CFS is given the appropriate clinical and psychological interpretation. Saying that ME/CFS has mitochondrial dysfunction at is core is an overstatement, as these are all proposed mechanisms that are perhaps predisposing or contributing to the illness. For many, including this reviewer, CFS/ME is predominantly a condition triggered by excessive rest in predisposed individuals following acute triggers, and its interpretation requite a psychosocial and psychiatric framework. This needs to come across more clearly in the review, otherwise the readers may perceive this review as if the pathogenesis of CFS/ME has been fully discovered (and it is due to a mitochondria dysfunction) which at this stage cannot be accepted as a proved statement. I would request that the abstract and that page 14 are particularly edited to avoid the current emphasis on mitocondria dysfunction ...

PS: Also he's working with and has praised White.
 
Messages
2,391
Location
UK
Professor of Biological Psychiatry
? :confused:

Edit:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_psychiatry

Biological psychiatry
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the medical field of biological psychiatry. For the journal, see Biological Psychiatry (journal).
Biological psychiatry or biopsychiatry is an approach to psychiatry that aims to understand mental disorder in terms of the biological function of the nervous system. It is interdisciplinary in its approach and draws on sciences such as neuroscience, psychopharmacology, biochemistry, genetics, epigenetics and physiology to investigate the biological bases of behavior and psychopathology. Biopsychiatry is that branch / speciality of medicine which deals with the study of biological function of the nervous system in mental disorders.
[My italics]
 
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Cheshire

Senior Member
Messages
1,129
So, in 2012, Pariente said:
it will be helpful in clarifying the simplistic assumption and ME/CFS and chronic inflammation are the same process. [...] CFS/ME is predominantly a condition triggered by excessive rest in predisposed individuals following acute triggers.

And in 2017:
The notion that the immune and inflammatory systems is involved in ME/CFS is not new.
 

A.B.

Senior Member
Messages
3,780
Pariante may simply be ill informed, trusting his colleagues to do good work and honestly report findings. There are many people in the UK who are just going by the "evidence", not realising that it's extremely distorted. Conformism and peer pressure are also powerful.

He is on twitter by the way, if anyone wants to try and educate him.
 
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Chrisb

Senior Member
Messages
1,051
The review by Pariante which is posted above is a curious piece of work. It might make some sort of sense if he is trying to make the distinction between ME/CFS and CFS/ME. Presumably he must be aware of preferred differences in usage but, as the term CFS/ME does not appear in the title of the work under review, one is left wondering whether the terms are merely being used interchangeably. Presumably this is not the case, but one would then expect clearer definition of terms.
 
The review by Pariante which is posted above is a curious piece of work. It might make some sort of sense if he is trying to make the distinction between ME/CFS and CFS/ME. Presumably he must be aware of preferred differences in usage but, as the term CFS/ME does not appear in the title of the work under review, one is left wondering whether the terms are merely being used interchangeably. Presumably this is not the case, but one would then expect clearer definition of terms.
It may not be directly applicable to what you are talking about but MEGA aren't adverse to using the two terms interchangeably, most of the time they use CFS/ME but I've seen them use ME/CFS as well.