• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of, and finding treatments for, complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia, long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Edward Shorter to give talk on CFS at NIH

JaimeS

Senior Member
Messages
3,408
Location
Silicon Valley, CA
It sounds like someone invited him at someone they trusted's suggestion without doing the 15 minutes of interwebs research that would show he's a crank.

My favorite part is when he says there is no biological evidence or biological research for ME, just this year.

I swear, it's like Schrodinger's Research with this sort of theorist. If they plug their ears and hum super-loud, there could be research, there might not be research...

Who's to say?

(Pubmed. Pubmed is to say.)
 

Never Give Up

Collecting improvements, until there's a cure.
Messages
971
Jennie Spotila's latest http://occupyme.net/2016/11/04/enough-is-enough/

← Dr. Koroshetz Responds

Enough Is Enough
Posted on November 4, 2016 by Jennie Spotila
After I pointed out to Dr. Walter Koroshetz, Chair of the Trans-NIH ME/CFS Working Group, that NIH had invited a speaker who has publicly insulted people with ME/CFS and anyone who takes this disease seriously, Dr. Koroshetz responded that “inclusion in scientific conversation is not an endorsement,” and so little is known “that inclusivity of scientific thought will be critical to our success.”

nclusivity of scientific thought” does not typically include hypotheses that have been disproven. NIH does not invite HIV denialists and anti-vaxxers as speakers because they add no value to NIH’s work. So if NIH is making sure an opinion is included in the conversation, then NIH has made a judgment that the opinion is worth thinking about. Extending an invitation to Dr. Edward Shorter means that NIH expects he will say something relevant to its work.

To which I say: Enough.

Reams of data and peer reviewed papers have confirmed what patients have always known: ME/CFS is not a psychological disorder. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the National Academy of Medicine and NIH’s own P2P Panel concurred.

It is past time to discard the psychogenic myths of CFS’s past, once and for all.

Enough. Is. Enough.

I do not accept that outdated views, disproven by more recent work, should be included in the scientific conversation. My health and my life are worth more than that. I demand rigor. I demand data. I deserve quality science, not dusty old-fashioned prejudice.

I do not accept being dismissed, belittled or disrespected. I will not be manipulated into believing that my reality is not real.

People with ME/CFS are not delusional somatizers. The National Academy of Medicine (IOM) report was not junk science. Militant advocates did not hijack the committee. People with ME/CFS have not obsessed their way into disability.

Until the National Institutes of Health – as an institution and as a collection of individuals – sees this truth of the matter, there is nothing more to say.
 
Slightly off topic but I can't help being reminded of the CIHR anonymous review no1, responsible for the rejection of the canadian catalyst grant application for ME/CFS, a review I believe @Sidereal called "a sinister piece of garbage" (a euphemism).

Could that have been Shorter himself?

Here are some quotes from each, too few to draw conclusions, but there are some rhetorical similarities, which makes one wonder... (and of course they are both canadians)


-Shorter: "The IOM report systematically overlooked any alternative explanation; it ignored the large critical literature in medicine on CFS"
-Sinister reviewer: "Failure to acknowledge the substantial literature that has established psychosocial factors as both a cause and perpetuating factor for CFS is concerning"



-Shorter: "These illness beliefs may lead to disability, as people obsess about their symptoms, entrench themselves in the conviction of organicity, and become disabled."
-Sinister reviewer: "Attributing symptoms to underlying physical pathology results in low levels of physical activity, which in turn amplifies fatigue severity"



-Shorter: "This illness attribution [to EBV] dissipated with the discovery that the great majority of the population carried positive titers for the virus"
-Sinister reviewer: "There is no compelling evidence that any infectious agent is a cause of CFS"


And then you have this - both make the same clumsy attempt at showing they are sensitive to the potential tragedies:

-Shorter: "Their marriages may break up; they may lose their jobs. The human consequences of these illness beliefs, in other words, may be considerable"
-Sinister reviewer: "Failure to attend to psychiatric co-morbidity can be devastating; individuals labelled with CFS are at higher risk of suicide than matched controls without CFS"

(the clumsiness obviously being that, all too often, what is most distressing to a patient is precisely the kind of skeptical claims they are themselves making regarding the biological reality of the illness)



So, should these two be one - that would be "Sinister Shorter"…- he would well deserve this designation, for, even though no one is ever directly to blame for a death like that of Justin Noble's recently, it could be that Justin would still be here with us if he had had that little "hope boost" that the catalyst grant approval would have given to many very ill canadians.

Shorter, if you are indeed "Sinister Shorter", you have already caused enough harm in Canada, so please stay out of the US, where much good is being done right now more than ever.
 

Denise

Senior Member
Messages
1,095
fwiw - I have emailed NIH about this unusual presentation re a physiological disease. I hope I get a reasonable response (and soon)!


The only response I have received is the mass email sent by Koroshetz.
 

HowToEscape?

Senior Member
Messages
626
This is ripe for a FOIA, no? Maybe @JeannetteBurmeister could consider it? I wouldn't mind doing it myself, I could probably figure out who was in on inviting him, and possibly any documented discussion as to why. Problem is it will take ages for them to get around to it.

@mfairma, I understand the urgency you have. I have it too. However, your drawing from a very sick group that is spread across the country and may not share age/income/interests in common. There is a reason effective leaders are praised, because aggregating diverse people to single goal in a single way is a truly difficult task. Its also a different generation, dancing naked around HHS maybe would have worked in the 60s - but by the 80s it would been insane for the AIDS people to do that.

The 2010s are a different game, I think if millions missing could continue to grow it would be an excellent venue. Documentaries are another effective modern strategy - not ones only people with CFS will watch, but things like VICE. Petitions are jokes. Its about accessing a long-term media narrative through which congress is taken on. There are ways to do this and millions missing is certainly a good start.

The AIDS crowd were organized, media-savvy and effective. We're the opposite, and we're getting opposite results. In my city, having HIV gets you a free apartment (vacated apartments ofter rent in less than 7 days here, they can turn over mid-month). Us? Back of the hand.
 

Never Give Up

Collecting improvements, until there's a cure.
Messages
971
#MEAction's first thing tomorrow
Food for thought/possible inspiration for your article: @alex3619 's signature line beautifully captures the fallacy of the psychosomatic belief system:

Psychobabble ... I can't believe its not science!

If we have a psychosomatic illness because a physical illness cannot be objectively shown, how is a psychosomatic illness any more valid since it cannot be objectively shown?

Psychogenic Medicine - Dismiss, Reject, Object.

A psychosomatic disorder is simply the belief that someone has a psychosomatic disorder. It is failure to diagnose. If there are any papers that prove the existence of any psychosomatic disorder, NAME ONE!?

Medically Unexplained Symptoms are Psychosomatic? Psychosomatic illnesses are medically unexplained.
 

JaimeS

Senior Member
Messages
3,408
Location
Silicon Valley, CA
I've always loved @alex3619 's signature, esp the first part:

"If we have a psychosomatic illness because a physical illness cannot be objectively shown, how is a psychosomatic illness any more valid since it cannot be objectively shown?"

Is already written, and ready to go out tomorrow morning... what the hey, I'll post it now, and FB it tomorrow morning. If you guys would like to read it, you'll be able to access it nowish.

FYI, initial title was Shorter to present view that IOM is "wacky" and ME is not a disease before I regained my senses.

Shorter invited to NIH to share perspective of disease denialism

...my original letter to V.W. included a lot more quotes, but it also would have included wild flailing if it had been in person, and possibly crazy-eyes. This version, which was written by one of our hard-working authors and tweaked by me and others, is probably, er, more coherent.

-J
 

Snow Leopard

Hibernating
Messages
5,902
Location
South Australia
Shorter is also a misogynistic creep, who has harassed women on Twitter among other things...

http://beverlyakerman.blogspot.com/2012/03/rebutting-sorry-edward-shorters-piece.html

I mean you know, what would you expect from a guy who wrote the book "A History of Women's bodies".
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1878648

Also, this doozy of mansplaining:
On Writing the History of Rape by Edward Shorter
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/493478?journalCode=signs

Which was criticised back in the day (1978):
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/493559?journalCode=signs

It's clear this guy has a long history of speaking about people he knows very little about because he has failed to listen to them.
 

Snow Leopard

Hibernating
Messages
5,902
Location
South Australia
I have a, er, friend who uses sci-hub and can't find full texts anyplace. Apparently no one thought they were important enough to reference.

The latter is a print book, and hopefully out of print. Some of the book reviews are accessible though.
But for the journal article, it usually works better if you search for the DOI.
DOI: 10.1086/493478

Just be warned about page 481 where he blames Feminism for the increase in the statistics. :thumbdown:
 
Last edited:

JaimeS

Senior Member
Messages
3,408
Location
Silicon Valley, CA
upload_2016-11-5_13-29-42.png


*horrified laughter*