"I pressed Dr. Antoni to get this study published in large part to rebut Dr. White’s claim to cure 25% of ME/CFS patients with CBT. Dr Antoni’s study shows that while CBT helps people with the illness as it does in every chronic disease model ever tested, it does not cure the illness. Dr. White challenged me in a meeting a year ago saying nothing else had been published to deny this finding. SO now you have a publication, written by a psychologist and well regarded CBT expert to use when you want to argue that CBT helps people with this illness (as it does in every chronic disease model ever tested) but does not cure the illness.
It is easy to pick apart any study after the fact, but put this in the context of the time (2001 when the grant request was written) and place (the US where we were absolutely obliged to use the CDC case definition if we hoped for funding at the time.)
I am very proud to work with a multidisciplinary team that includes experts in autonomic function, immunology, cell biology, psychoneuroimmunology, genomics, systems biology, nutrition, measurement illness state… the list goes on. Its a very exciting time and the team is very much jazzed and wants to see the work we do in all of these areas lead to both a clear understanding of the illness at the cellular level and then to effective treatments. You are going to see many papers this year from the different members of the team and taken separately you may fail to see the big picture. Don’t get sucked into too narrow a view. Wait and see… some amazing science is underway."
Nancy G. Klimas, M.D.
