By David Tuller, DrPH
It is a pleasure to read a pointed and effective smack-down of an ill-informed argument, especially when the argument is pushing the graded exercise therapy/cognitive behavior therapy (GET/CBT) paradigm for ME/CFS, Long Covid and related illnesses. That’s how I felt about the
excellent rebuttal this week to
a letter from some of the usual GET/CBT ideologues criticizing
a study published last year in
Nature Communications. That study reported a link between post-exertional malaise (PEM) and muscle abnormalities in people with Long Covid.
(I
interviewed Rob Wüst, the study’s senior author, last year. He also discussed his work in
a talk with Solve M.E., which supported the research.)
Among the signers of the critical letter were two of the lead PACE authors: Trudie Chalder, King’s College London’s methodologically and factually challenged professor of cognitive behavior therapy, and psychiatrist Michael Sharpe, an Oxford don and self-proclaimed scientific martyr. Another was Per Fink, the Danish psychiatrist under whose authority a young female ME patient was held against her and her family’s consent. And, not surprisingly, Paul Garner, an infectious diseases physician at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, who claimed to have cured his Long Covid with his powerful and manly thoughts, also added his name.
Professor Garner promoted the letter on social media and parroted its bogus assertion that the participants with PEM in the Wüst study were “deconditioned,” among other unwarranted statements. As he and his colleagues write: .....
Getting an email together to send article to Julie.