Attn Professionals: There is NO REASON to go on the Dr. Oz show

Bravo. Awesome post.

Abby, where is the difference between "Reparative Therapy" as a cure for LGBT people, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as a cure for people with ME/CFS?

And while we are at it? Surely some LGBT people have send angry letters to Dr. Oz about this – does that qualify Dr. Oz for the John Maddox prize?

After all, I think anybody who stands up for anti-scientific loonery like "Reparative Therapy" has "to deal with, well, if you know what I had to deal with covering the XMRV fiasco, take that, times a gazillion, times a couple decades…"?

And hasn't John Maddox said about AIDS that those darned homosexuals should change their wicked ways and stop their shameless promiscuous shagging?

So forget about retrovirology Abbie, do a study how to curb HIV with “Reparative Therapy”!!! I'm sure John Maddox would have approved.

CBT is a standard therapy for CFS. I know you dont like it, but thats a fact.

Reparative therapy is rejected by all medical professionals.

Maddox was wrong about HIV in a time it was scientifically reasonable to be wrong about HIV, learned from HIV researchers, and became an enemy of HIV Deniers. I already told you this. Wikipedia could have told you this. But you keep slandering him as if he was an HIV Denier.

Making comparisons like this and using flat-out dishonest tactics isnt persuasive.

Nail on the head, Abbie. I actually wrote about this same thing the other day, from a bit of a different angle - http://skepticink.com/gps/2012/11/23/michelle-obama-anderson-cooper-and…

I turned down an offer to contribute to the Oz fiasco because I had an previous engagement. Glad I did.

I do disagree about your assessment of Chris Mooney. His books and podcasts are entirely consistent with hard science. I don't think a comment about Oz would dilute that, and it may have even been sarcastic.

I don't know much about the roots of the Dr. Oz phenomenon, but was he at one time a protege of Oprah Winfrey?

It seems like right up her alley.

Oz may be a brilliant surgeon, but his TV doctor career is more like that of a turn of the 20th century side-show barker. That's incredibly sad because he's putting his greed over the actual well being of his audience.

As for Mooney, has ever ever apologized for any of the ridiculous shit he's pulled in the past? Even once? I wouldn't hold my breath for him to own up to his mistakes.

Tony - the difference between trying to "cure" an inbuilt natural tendency through shame, abuse, and brainwashing, and trying to help someone get a life, is worlds apart.

You have to bring CFS into everything, don't you?.

The thing is, CBT works. It helps promote healthier thinking patterns, to break out of negative self-destructive behaviours, and to equip you with coping strategies.

You can't go on ad nauseam about your terrible illness and the effects on your life, and then refuse and ridicule every test, treatment or program that might help. Surely you must see how that looks?

HIV /AIDS is a real, destructive retrovirus. Homosexuality does not need to be "fixed", it's homophobic society that needs therapy.

XMRV is not real, it never was. Functional disorders respond to CBT. Science has the upper hand.

As someone who is severely disabled, I would do ANYTHING to get better, or even improve enough so that I can sit up unaided. My nerves are being demyelinated, and if someone said "dog sh¡t capsules have been approved by NICE & MHRA" I'd be begging my GP for a prescription. if I was told "Your mind is destroying your nerves. ECT and CBT together will stop the damage" then I'd be hooked up before anyone knew what was happening.

Rejecting proven treatment en masse, screaming "How dare you say we're mental, our illness is REAL!", 24/7/365 liveblogging every symptom and every new stupid theory, claiming you're all being conspired against, pillorying any ex CFSer who says "Therapy and antidepressants made me better", ignoring and mocking actual research by saying things like "They only tested people with CFS and we have CFS/ME", or "They used the Oxford criteria and not the Canadian criteria", and finally, declaring "We have AIDS. Non-HIV AIDS, and it's worse than HIV/AIDS and cancer, and we're transmitting it to people, it's a CIA plot to incapacitate us" all adds up to people who don't want to be well.

It shows people happier in their fantasy world, busy little spiders in their "Osler's Web", conducting hate campaigns against scientists and researchers, while howling "We're being ignored, nobody wants to help us" Lying with the constant CFS/MEMEME trope that "AIDS and MS were considered to be mental illnesses until the 80s" Just... no. Charcot discovered and defined MS. Charcot. HIV/AIDS not only killed people rapidly, it had actual physical symptoms that were shockingly visible.

Libelling doctors and scientists who tell the truth, smearing and distorting words and facts put forth by anyone who claims "It's psychiatric. Nobody's saying your pain isn't real, just that it's a cognitive issue". In between hate mail and death threats, you maintain "Remembrance Walls" for people who "Died of CFS", which is bizarre, as it isn't a terminal illness. Suicide (a la Gilderdale) is not "Death from CFS". Beloved martyred poster girl Sophia Mirza died due to HSV-induced spinal meningitis, and acute renal failure caused by her refusal to eat or drink, as she believed she was "allergic to all food and water".

Perhaps the psychosis was induced by the meningitis, but she had a history of claiming to be "allergic" to EMF, to all household products, to light and sound etc, so an ongoing pattern of bizarre beliefs. Sounds like a mental issue to me...

It's almost as if denial of psychiatric causes of CFS is a defining symptom of the condition.

So get help, or stop bloody going on about how nobody wants to help.

(Granny Smiths^pastry = PIE!)
Is there maybe some regional pie-based communal orgy in the offing? Can I come?
And they jazz up TurboCider a treat.

Re ERV

Mr. Maddox should be compared with HIV/AIDS denier Peter Duesberg, who also raise some legitimate question about the relationship back in the 1980s. Unlike Maddox, he since chosen to ignore the mountains of evidence that have accrued since that time. This is a sad case of a once highly respected researcher who has turned into a crank.

Sorry Tony, you have my sympathies - but not sure of the connection in this regard.
He does however see CFS as a bad habit that therapy can resolve - so sorta - kinda - I guess...but not on this page.

(@ Doctor Croissant Dogs

You could have simply said, Im really ill, your not, get some therapy. Thats what most Doctors wear on a laminates anyhow - dont be embarrassed.)

Science on T.V - most times dreadful - but then I saw some Bishops last week seriously debating wether the Bible allows women Bishops - so unfortunately the cultural relativism at play allows anyone to have authority on the box. I dont know how you go about keeping kranks off T.V - except that in a science program context there really ought to be more exacting standards and sense of responsibility.

Still were are the ratings in that?

Wow, I guess everything that goes on TV can't be 100% accurate, and no one is honest either, it's all business unfortunately and politics also play a major role.

Thanks, ERV. OZ is a, um, metastatic harmful thing.

However...

"CBT is a standard therapy for CFS. I know you dont like it, but thats a fact."
This isn't solid ground. "CFS" is variously defined, with some usages being so broad and vague as to be meaningless. Trials of CBT have been at best controversial, and it is certainly not standard therapy among the few MDs who have experience treating this cohort. You could look up Cheney and Petersen to start.
As this is both O/T and a tangled subject I will leave it at that.