Neurasthenia is often considered to be what is now called mecfs, so I find that statement particularly disturbing coming from someone playing a key role in the NIH's intramural mecfs study.
It now seems likey that it was Brian Wallit invited Edwards Shorter to give his talk at the NIH.
Agreed. I think it's important to be realistic about Walitt. Walitt has been quite explicit in written papers dated as recently as 2015 about his views on both fibromyalgia and CFS (he doesn't use the term ME):
Wolfe & Walitt 2013: “The very strong resemblance of fibromyalgia to neurasthenia is a key observation. Time brings clarity to confusing illnesses of the past, and we now recognize that hysteria, neurasthenia and railway spine were almost always psychogenic disorders.”
Wolfe & Walitt 2013: “The rise of fibromyalgia and the disputes it has engendered represents the age-old battle over psychogenicity. All other things being equal, fibromyalgia should have failed. It began as a simple local pain disorder, but evolved over time in one that had multiple somatic symptoms and features that many considered psychosomatic. If these features were the death knell of neurasthenia, they should have also spelled the death of fibromyalgia. But they didn’t. The era was different, and powerful cultural forces stood being fibromyalgia and fought against the idea of a psychogenic illness.”
Wolfe and Walitt conclude: “Fibromyalgia seems to be a somatic symptom disorder with remarkable similarities to neurasthenia. It represents the end position on a continuum of distress. While psychological issues are clear, powerful societal forces are marshalled on behalf of fibromyalgia and it seems likely that they will sustain the fibromyalgia, at least for the present.”
Full paper at https://www.arthritis-research.org/... of fibromyalgia - NRR submission version.pdf
Walitt is the Lead Clinical Investigator of the NIH study into “Post-Infectious ME/CFS” and yet is someone who does not believe that infection has been scientifically validated as a trigger for ME/CFS. In Wang, Walitt et al’s 2015 chemo-brain paper available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4750385/, Walitt and his co-authors state
“Both of these illnesses [fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome] have disputed causal triggers, such as trauma in fibromyalgia and infection in chronic fatigue syndrome, whose validity is also not answered by the scientific literature to date.”
In the same paper, further clarification is given that Walitt places chronic fatigue syndrome firmly in the same somatoform category where he places fibromyalgia: “The discordance between the severity of subjective experience and that of objective impairment is the hallmark of somatoform illnesses, such as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.”
Dr Walitt describes his research interests in this researcher story, dated August 2012 available at
http://georgetownhowardctsa.org/researchers/researcher-stories/brian-t--walitt-
Dr Walitt: “My research interest is perceptual illness. In these disorders, a person experiences a range of different bodily sensations, such as pain and fatigue, without any clear external cause. In some, these sensations can be bothersome while in others they can be disabling. The perceptual illnesses that interest me change their names with every generation, with current disorders being called fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and post-Lyme syndrome.”
Dr Walitt continues: “My involvement in the field started during my medical training as I saw my first patients with fibromyalgia. The complaints of these patients were very familiar and made me realize how common they are in the general population, even amongst my friends and family. The desire to figure out a way to alleviate this particular type of suffering drew me into the field. As I have become more involved in research over the years, I have become convinced that unraveling the mysteries of perceptual illnesses will also shed light into the mechanisms that enable all people to feel and think and expand our understanding of the human condition.”
You're not alleviating my particular type of suffering, Dr Walitt.
