I am only just back from London where Ian Lipkin (with his broken leg) gave an excellent presentation to a patient meeting at Allen and Overy this morning
Ian then went off to speak to the press at the Science Media Centre:
http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-encounter-prof-ian-lipkin-columbia-university/
This is the current list of those attending the press briefing:
Associated Press
Bloomberg TV
Daily Mail
New Scientist
Radio 4 Today
Reuters
The journalists will, of course, have wanted to talk to Ian about a range of medical topics that he is involved with in addition to ME/CFS
So please watch out for reports from now on…
Ian then flew back to New York this afternoon
So thanks to everyone who helped us to pay for Ian's trip to London - it was money very well spent!
The first UKRC Bristol conference was outstanding - and this is the feedback that we are also receiving from both our overseas speakers (Ian, Robert Dantzer, Andrew LLoyd) and a considerable number of researchers who attended or participated in the meeting
It was great to see Prof Jonathan Edwards there as well and I understand that he has been reporting on some of the content already
The patient meeting was also full on Monday afternoon and resulted in some lively and thoughtful discussion on the challenges facing ME/CFS research
As for content, I can assure the internet sceptics that this was a very biomedical conference looking at infection, immunology, neurology, neuroinflammation and microglia (which had lots of mentions!), muscle and mitochondrial pathology, genetics, neuroimaging (and how they all link up), pain, sleep, and all the new technologies (genomics, proteomics) that we need to make use of
The abnormal illness beliefs and behaviour model wasn't even mentioned...…
Professor Stephen Holgate made it clear in his closing remarks that we are dealing with a serious MULTISYSTEM DISEASE and that we must now go out and bring in new researchers to follow up the all leads and exciting new findings that were discussed over the past two days
I will be preparing a detailed and thoughtful report over the next week or so for the MEA website
And am happy to answer questions in the meantime
But this will have to wait till tomorrow - it has been a very hectic six days starting with my daughter's wedding last weekend, then Bristol and London, and I'm just home today in time for our wedding anniversary!