I thought his comments about Nancy Klimas were unfairly harsh. She has done interesting immune research and she is still interested in being involved in research (she is involved in some way in the Biobank project, as well as other things). She is primarily an MD, and is not a research scientist, so she could just have stuck with seeing patients and not got involved in research.
Though I agree that research needs to be the priority to move things forward for us. (Published research, for example will carry more clout than clinical opinion, or "anecdotal" data - well it is supposed to, unless it gets ignored, but I don't think the biomedical stuff can be ignored forever. And more people will potentially benefit from published research, than if you have a clinic without any involvement in research, where only the patients who see that doctor benefit.), I don't see a conflict between what she is doing and advancing research.
If anything, from what I can gather (I could be wrong), having the clinic, means it will be easier to have more defined patient cohorts for research. I think she was also trying to train in other doctors to work at this clinic (or one anyway) which is good as it will mean more doctors who can carry on the work.
I have not met Nancy Klimas but have seen quite a few of her talks on video/DVD and she always came across as genuinely interested not self-important. Maybe the reviewer has not come across some of the pompus asses we have come across!
But other than that I thought the review of the conference was really interesting.
Orla