"The Chokehold Behavioral Treatments Have on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" (Nov 11)

[Tom Kindlon]

"The Chokehold Behavioral Treatments Have on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome"
by
Cort Johnson (Nov 11, 2015)

http://bit.ly/1Mr261r
i.e.
http://www.cortjohnson.org/blog/2015/11/11/chokehold-behavioral-treatments-chronic-fatigue-syndrome/

Cort looks at what ME/CFS treatment studies have been published since the start of 2013.

He highlights that there has been a lack of drug studies and that most of the these studies were small.

I've posted some extracts below.

"With only one type of non-behavioral treatment, acupuncture, being assessed in more than one study, few of these treatment options have a chance of going mainstream. (CBT/GET studies showed up in 38 citations). The countries that dominated the behavioral studies (n=36) – the UK and the Netherlands – showed a distinct preference for the types of studies they wish to fund; they produced only three non-behavioral studies."

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Magnitudes more funding for behavioral treatments means they dominate the treatment regimens for many

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"The implications of two governments [UK & Dutch] focusing substantial funding on one treatment type is clear: a dramatic restriction of the possible treatment options recommended for doctors and ultimately for most patients. Few of the treatments ME/CFS experts use showed up in this survey and few of which are available to patients seeing non-experts.

When a slim portion of the possible treatment options for a disease gets outsized attention three things happen: that treatment gets an undue focus in the media, doctors and patients treatment options are limited, and patients miss possibilities for treatment."

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One [factor] is the unwillingness of federal funders such as the NIH to fund research that will reveal viable treatment targets for drug manufacturers. This poor research funding has left ME/CFS a biological mystery. This has opened the door, as has happened so many times to so many diseases over time, to a behavioral interpretation of it.

The willingness of federal funders in the UK and Europe to pump large amounts of money into the behavioral treatment trials has effectively exploited that opening. A significant portion of the medical profession either accepts a behavioral interpretation of ME/CFS or has little or no knowledge of other possible treatments.

 

[alex3619]

Domination by funding is a hallmark of Zombie Science.

 

[alex3619]

I substantially agree with @Cort on this issue.