Dr David Tuller: Losers in NICE Guideline Fight Remain Defiant Despite Public Repudiation of Their Claims

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https://www.virology.ws/2021/10/31/...81a4f85b16f7f599966da79d5fc3174#comment-62451

Trial By Error: Losers in NICE Guideline Fight Remain Defiant Despite Public Repudiation of Their Claims
31 October 2021 by David Tuller 1 Comment

By David Tuller, DrPH

*For more about the significance of the new NICE guideline for ME/CFS, the blog ME/CFS Skeptic has this excellent summary. Also, psychologist Brian Hughes covers the deep concerns of leading medical groups that the guideline recommends against the Lightning Process.

It is not surprising that esteemed experts whose research has been publicly exposed as a bunch of crap would push back quickly, and that promoters of the debunked work would rally round in defense. That’s what we’ve seen in the wake of Friday’s publication of a new ME/CFS guideline from the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). The document, which reverses the recommendations of a 2007 guideline, specifically advises against the two long-standing first-line treatments—graded exercise therapy (GET) and a specialized form of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). Both interventions have long been promoted as cures for the underlying condition, based on the theory that patients’ symptoms were perpetuated by a combination of unhelpful illness beliefs and severe deconditioning rather than any organic dysfunction.

Two of the three lead authors of the now-discredited PACE trial, which was once billed as the “definitive” investigation of this approach, offered peevish responses that failed to address NICE’s concerns. In the statements, provided by the Science Media Centre as part of a round-up of comments about the new guideline, they mainly re-bleated past assertions about the benefits of their beloved treatments. (The Science Media Centre’s decision to offer a wide range of comment, rather than just statements overwhelmingly in support of the GET/CBT approach, represents a big shift in how it handles this issue. Perhaps it realizes it needs to cut its losses rather than go down with the GET/CBT ship.)