Swedish Conference: Scientific Knowledge on Pathways to Work - the UK example

[tomk]

Apologies, I can not speak Swedish.
However I thought there might be somebody who might be interested in this conference that took place last year in Sweden.

As one can see, Peter White spoke.
He believes that graded exercise therapy can restore the ability to work in ME/CFS patients.

I don't have more information on this conference.
Mansel Aylward is another person that ME/CFS activists in the UK give out about.

If one searches the site http://www.meactionuk.org.uk one can find more information on them.

Tom


Scientific Knowledge on Pathways to Work; the UK Example
The first conference of the Social Council of Sweden;
The Ministry of Health and Social Affairs
Sociala rådet, Socialdepartementet
Time: 10.00 – 17.00, December 1st 2008
http://ki.se/content/1/c6/01/41/46/Konferensprogram%20081201.pdf

...

13.40 What helps occupational rehabilitation when the doctor cannot explain the symptoms?
Peter White, Professor

...

15.05  Panel: How can governmental interventions be designed so that scientific knowledge can be gained from them? What research is needed at this stage? What conclusion can be drawn?
Professor Mansel Aylward, Professor Dame Carol Black, MD Debbie Cohen, Professor Bob Grove, Professor Gordon Waddell, Professor Peter White
Chair: Kristina Alexanderson

....

Professor Peter D White MD FRCP FRCPsych
Professor of Psychological Medicine at Bart's and the London School of Medicine. His clinical work involves general hospital psychiatry at St Bartholomew's hospital, London, and he also jointly leads a specialist service for patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS/ME) (www.bartscfsme.org). He does consultation work for a re-insurance company and the UK Department for Work and Pensions, particularly advising on mental health and symptom based diagnoses. His research interests include the nosology, causes and treatments of CFS/ME, particularly establishing the aetiological role of viral infections, and the efficacy of graded exercise therapy as a treatment. He is currently the lead co-principal investigator of the PACE trial (www.pacetrial.org), which is a multi-centre trial that compares four different rehabilitation approaches for 600 patients with CFS/ME.

[Mayordomo]

Dear tomk, thank you for letting us know this. I was unaware of this conferense. I edited your message in order to only have the White things present, the rest of the information can be accessed in the PDF-file.

Oh, this might explain why the so called "focus report" (fokusrapporten) released by the regional health care adminstration of Stockholm in april 2009 on CFS which was not scientific nor based upon experience. It was rather a condurundum of myths about CFS. Here in Sweden there are a psychatrist (Anders Lundin) and physician (Lars-Gunnar Gunnarsson), that are of the firm belief that ME is not a fysiological/somatic disease, but rather a psychiatric disease. Although they do everything to describe it with other words. Lars-Gunnar Gunnarsson states that GET is very good for CFS-patients. For example he says physical excercise is good for neurogeneration. But he does not realize that ME-patients get high oxidative stress, increased inflammation, decreased glucose metabolism, increased cerebral lactate and less blood flow in brain as a result of excercise. I can not see how these things would be beneficial for neurogeneration.  

In Sweden we have something called "utmattningssyndrom" (strain/overexertion syndrome), which has interested more scientists, newspapers and politicians than ME/CFS. Actually, now many physcians believe that "utmattningssyndrom" and ME/CFS is the same thing, although there is no scienfic article that has given a proof of that. I think that the correct thing in Sweden would have been to use "burn-out" (utbränd in Swedish), because this would have made it possible to compare with international resarch. As it is now, we seem to work in isolation. I question this because it is not very scientific to work in isolation, and working with entities that can not be questioned by the international scientific community. In fact one could accuse the Swedish researchers of avoiding the possibility to be questioned. A group of researchers in Sweden are now well funded for burn-out/overexertion syndrome, and they claim that they are world leading, but of course they are world leading. Who would not be world leading in an area that they are alone of working in. The language beeing a barrier for foreign researchers to take part of their research. The use of a different name, making it a new "virgin" entity.

I think that overexertion syndrome is a Swedish invention. I have not seen it abroad. Abroad I think they would use "burn out" as a diagnosis. Here in Sweden we misuse the WHO ICD list by using F43.8 other reactions to severe stress ( http://me-cfs.se/#_Toc215756865 ) instead of Z73.3 burn-out.


Lately the SBU – The Swedish Council on Technology Assessment in Health Care -  has made a small litteraturestudy and have found that CBT is not efficient for earlier return to work for CFS patients. This should maybe be communicated to UK, because NICE has concluded that CBT is very efficient for treatment of CFS.   Unfortunalely, the short article is not available in English.

Medför kognitiv beteendeterapi (KBT), alternativt trädgårdsterapi, alternativt bildterapi snabbare återgång till arbete efter kroniskt trötthetssyndrom?
SBU, January 2009
http://www.sbu.se/sv/Publicerat/Upplysningstjanst/Medfor-kognitiv-beteendeterapi-KBT-alternativt-tradgardsterapi-alternativt-bildterapi-snabbare-atergang-till-arbete-efter-kroniskt-trotthetssyndrom-/

[silversessan]

heja SBU!! De har tidigare diskuterat censurtrösklarna i akademin! We thank you TomK for youre information about lobbyism against swedish politicians. We need a stronger independant academy in Sweden. Right now it only exists on the internet. There is like censorship in the sedish academy and the scientific boards admits "we give politics what they want!" truths they like to hear.. the medical obby is strong and they want to have political sanctioning for not giving us scientific treatment to better us.  They´are making us a poor country if the accept this. Are the military agents in some sense these scioentist -like Wessley working for the military with GulfWarillness. But why care about patient rehabilitation or medical rehabilitation when they just want people occupied to get better statistics. We have a largescale yothunemployment that is more urgent to adress as a social and socialsecurityissue. But here bashing sick is more trendy right now...