Professor Peter White reviews IOM report in Psychological Medicine

[Kyla]

@Jonathan Edwards There is another thread for this (http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/vancouver-complex-chronic-diseases-explained.41797/)

but this physician who is a director of the Vancouver clinic wins the prize for disregarding science and branding us patients as bio-psycho-social-central sensitization BS.

Here he actually tells other physicians in BC how to treat patients of our kind. (Make sure to scroll all the way to the bottom, to the comments because he has more to add)

http://thischangedmypractice.com/hope-for-patients-with-fatigue-pain-and-unexplained-symptoms/

We people in British Columbia need and deserve more medicine and less psychosocial BS.
(Edit to add: all over the world... )

@Jonathan Edwards
...and this is the "treatment" protocol for the clinic this doctor @Kati mentioned works at (and the only ME/CFS clinic in all of Canada ):
http://www.bcwomens.ca/Professional-Resources-site/Documents/Clinical Protocal-ME-CFS 1.4.pdf

It gives GET and CBT a "level A" evidence rating

 

[barbc56]

I don't know what's worse. The fact that he believes this or the fact that he's clueless. Probably both.

Barb

 

[Dolphin]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/676948804663443456

 

[Dolphin]

RE: previous post:

Here's the Lancet editorial:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)60270-7/fulltext

 

[barbc56]

Love the picture at the bottom of the editorial where the lovely young lady looks like she's simply taking a refreshing nap.

It's just such an inaccurate picture of someone with me/cfs. So telling!

Barb

 

[leela]

I really wish these old farts would just retire to Majorca or somewhere farther distant, shut the fuck up, and make room for the new generation of young doctors with open minds and real scientific chops.
I'd be perfectly happy for them to live out their days rehashing their magnificent careers as they lounge at the beach getting sunburns on their pasty skin, drinking too much beer, and playing tiny slot machines at the local sandwich bar.

 

[halcyon]

I really wish these old farts would just retire to Majorca or somewhere farther distant, shut the fuck up, and make room for the new generation of young doctors with open minds and real scientific chops.

Unfortunately all these old farts are professors so they are the ones that taught the new generation. I wonder how open their minds are really going to be.

 

[Asa]

I can't help but see biopsychosocial as a kind of Baby-Boomer New-Age mysticism gone very, very wrong.


[EDIT: See also: Boomers = a Strauss-Howe "prophet" generation, a "second turning" and "spiritual awakening":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss–Howe_generational_theory

Neil Howe CSPAN 1998: “Boomers are very interesting. The roll that Boomer-like generations play in American [and/or Western] history, in every case these kinds of generations, born right after a crisis... coming of age attacking the institutions of their parents... And we see this pattern again and again in American history and.. Well, we have a message for every generation in American history, but our message to Boomers is “Look out! Some of your worst tendencies have yet to come to the surface....

My focus is on trying to alert people to the coming crisis in entitlements and trying to find a move to a new paradigm or new way of thinking about the aging of America, the aging of most of the developed world, and a way to make it affordable…]

 

[Sean]

Henry Anderson @Macanders
.@TomKindlon Didn't a Lancet editorial try and claim PACE paved the way for IOM? Now a few months later author White is trying to rubbish it

11:45 AM - 16 Dec 2015

Nice catch.

 

[sarah darwins]

but this physician who is a director of the Vancouver clinic wins the prize for disregarding science and branding us patients as bio-psycho-social-central sensitization BS.

Here he actually tells other physicians in BC how to treat patients of our kind. (Make sure to scroll all the way to the bottom, to the comments because he has more to add)

These guys often remind me of the revolutionary communists I knew at college (for some reason, I knew quite a few). If anyone questioned them they would adopt a superior smile and make a patronising comment about “false consciousness” — a handy concept which meant that by disagreeing with them you were proving them right.

I’m not sure there’s much difference between the stuff about false illness beliefs and that old Marxist canard. Certainly, when I look at how the BPS crowd here in the UK deal with criticism, I always feel like I'm back in the kitchen of some dodgy flat having another argument with a 'revolutionary'. Same old tricks.

 

[JayS]

Well, there is the matter of the very real org from awhile ago called the Revolutionary Communist Party, and Living Marxism, and Spiked!...and the head of the Science Media Centre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Fox_(press_officer)

https://web.archive.org/web/20020614075928/http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/00000002D3B6.htm

 

[sarah darwins]

Well, there is the matter of the very real org from awhile ago called the Revolutionary Communist Party, and Living Marxism, and Spiked!...and the head of the Science Media Centre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiona_Fox_(press_officer)

https://web.archive.org/web/20020614075928/http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/00000002D3B6.htm

Yeah, I've waded through that particular swamp a bit. George Monbiot writes well about the strange case of the British Marxist intellectual tradition (neither far left nor far right yet somehow both) and how influential a number of those people have become. They're everywhere.

And weirdly they're very anti-psychology and yet very pro-BPS, which you might think was a contradiction. As I understand it, their thinking is: we're seeing the increasing psychologising of everyday life, causing people with normal everyday problems to seek validation through psychologically classified pseudo-illnesses (a sort of new opiate for the masses), and in extreme cases this leads some people to seek validation of their personal inadequacy/alienation through the self-invention of a notional state of illness (ME and other 'MUS'). Regrettably (heavy sigh), the only way to cure these unfortunate, deluded souls is through psychological techniques which will unravel their psychologically self-imposed pseudo-illnesses.

 

[Asa]

Speaking of "revolutionaries":

"Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (February 16, 1802 – January 16, 1866) was an American spiritual teacher...philosopher, magnetizer, mesmerist, healer, and inventor... Quimby's work is widely recognized as leading to the New Thought movement."

"...Quimby encountered Lucius Burkmar, an uneducated youth who was particularly susceptible to hypnosis. Quimby and Lucius began a tour of their own, practicing mesmeric demonstrations in front of large crowds.

Later Quimby and Lucius stopped touring and Quimby began healing people of ailments which doctors could not cure. Quimby explained to his patients that disease was caused by false beliefs..."

"The scholar of faith healing, Barry Morton, has argued that Quimby's constant tinkering with the mind cure method led him to make important discoveries towards the cure of psychosomatic illnesses.

Although Quimby did not publish his findings himself, he did train many others in his methods and hence started a "gnostic" healing tradition. Eventually, his methods were used by...-who revolutionized faith healing in the 1880s..."

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

"William James... described New Thought as follows: ...for the sake of having a brief designation, I will give the title of the "Mind-cure movement."

"The New Thought movement was based on the teachings of Phineas Quimby (1802–66), an American mesmerist and healer. Quimby had developed a belief system which included the tenet that illness originated in the mind as a consequence of erroneous beliefs..."

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

EDIT: If he were aquinted with the politics at hand (ex. through Tuller's recent work), it might be interesting to hear what opinions the above faith-healing scholar (Barry Morton) has regarding the (insurance-driven) biopsychosocial movement.

Otherwise and just a thought:
The Biopsychosocial School Cafe: Today's Special: Word salad with snake oil

 

[JayS]

I figured you had to know about that, especially given the language you chose. I figured better to be redundant for those who do know about this, I think anyone new to this would find that stuff both interesting and alarming.

The attitudes from these people does reek of an arrogance that is rather uncommon in my experience. They know what's best for us, of course. I'm all for deference to experts. Problem is, when it comes to ME/CFS, the experts just happen to be wrong.

 

[Asa]

As I understand it, their thinking is: we're seeing the increasing psychologising of everyday life, causing people with normal everyday problems to seek validation through psychologically classified pseudo-illnesses (a sort of new opiate for the masses), and in extreme cases this leads some people to seek validation of their personal inadequacy/alienation through the self-invention of a notional state of illness (ME and other 'MUS'). Regrettably (heavy sigh), the only way to cure these unfortunate, deluded souls is through psychological techniques which will unravel their psychologically self-imposed pseudo-illnesses.

I've also seen the claim that a patriarchial medical tradition is medicalizing fatigue in women because said patriarchy believes women are weak. I suppose "good" feminists (CBT practioners??) are supposed to re-educate all the patriarchial brain-washed women into understanding that they are not really sick.

 

[sarah darwins]

does reek of an arrogance

You've nailed it. These are elitists, the whole rotten bunch of them. They speak an arcane language designed to impress and exclude, and believe they are privy to some secret knowledge beyond the grasp of hoi polloi. If you have the stomach to wade into it and dig down far enough, what you find at the bottom is a whole lot of nothing. I dabbled in this world for a few years postgrad and ended up with total contempt for this stuff and the people who deal in it. Their arrogance is matched only by their hypocrisy.

 

[sarah darwins]

I've also seen the claim that a patriarchial medical tradition is medicalizing fatigue in women because said patriarchy believes women are weak. I suppose "good" feminists (CBT practioners??) are supposed to re-educate all the patriarchial brain-washed women into understanding that they are not really sick.

Awesome! (irony emoticon?) I'd missed that one. There's no end to it, is there. I don't mind people entertaining themselves with this garbage on their own time — it happens in many of the social sciences (of which psychology is clearly one). The alarming thing is that through the world of healthcare in the UK this lot have managed to get themselves into positions which materially impact people's lives. It's what they all dreamed of when they were planning the revolution in their university days.

 

[Sean]

Their arrogance is matched only by their hypocrisy.

And the damage they do.

 

[duncan]

At least, in the fine tradition of Dickens and Maugham, they know how to spin a good story. And like Dickens, it's not only entertaining, it's serial. Smart; they have a subscriber base that keeps anticipating and demanding more. Like that opiate @sarah darwins just alluded to (with a nod to Marx).

 

[worldbackwards]

worldbackwards reviews "The Career of Professor Peter White" on Phoenix Rising forums: an extract:

But perhaps the most unhelpful aspect of this career is its over-emphasis on the psychological with an almost complete lack of focus on physical aspects of the illness. We have a whole career reviewing the potential roles of psychosocial stress, sickness beliefs and secondary gains, but little if any mention of the possibility of immune, endocrine and infectious causes. This career took the lives of millions of sufferers to sustain, and it's protagonist has missed a golden opportunity to pay attention to the real world and to move us away from the sterile, psychiatric understanding that still dominates this illness.

Because he's a bit of a nob really. When it comes down to it.