You can go back 24 years, or 50, or 70, or a 100, and things are still just as bad. Even Long Covid didn't change anything, the medical profession is still locked firmly in its refusal to do anything, prefers to see millions of lives wasted than admit they got anything wrong.

No need to imagine too hard, it already exists: these days it's called the biopsychosocial model of illness, the updated bullshit name for psychosomatic ideology. And not surprisingly, it's disastrous. Adds nothing. Makes everything worse for everyone. Super expensive for zero gain.

Obviously this is a ridiculous claim, but it's not any more false than some of the stuff the medical profession has asserted and acted on. Where psychology meets medicine is a space just as devoid of science or reason as any of the junk RFK Jr is peddling, and one paved the way to the other.

It never sinks in how completely miserable life with chronic illness. Medicine is completely delusional about it. Their descriptions are so far off the mark it's pathetic. I keep reading dystopian scenarios that I would trade for in a heartbeat. People have no idea how miserable this is.

I'm mostly OK with the fact that most people aren't thinking about it. It's not their job. I will never forgive that the people whose job it is to do something about it didn't just do nothing to make things better, almost every single thing they did made everything worse for all of us.

Somehow he escapes all blame for it, but this is mostly Richard Horton's fault as editor-in-chief of the Lancet. Andrew Wakefield did not self-publish on a personal blog or in some obscure journal of no importance. Horton carried water for his shitty paper for 12 years. Asshole.

this, like all eugenics, will both cause great harm, intensify all kinds of biases, and fail to produce more geniuses.

"DecodeME is now calling on researchers worldwide to join us in accelerating ME/CFS research.” - Prof Chris Ponting (DecodeME Investigator). We encourage researchers to explore and build on our findings. Apply for access to our rich dataset now shorturl.at/F8aOM

In advance of your segment. Please watch. Doctors have been taught to gaslight patients with #ME for decades. This video from the 90s teaches GPs that patients are frustrating because they are mistaken about the cause of their illness and can often engage in arguments. @natashadevon.bsky.social

Measles was eradicated with the vaccine, which is 97% effective at preventing measles. Antivaxxers are the ones keeping people sick for profit.

Clip from yesterday’s BBC Radio Wales: Robert’s son has lived with #MECFS since age 11. Today is #SevereME Day and his 33rd birthday. At his worst, he was too ill to speak, turn his body or his head — and had to be tube-fed. Most doctors have no idea it can be this severe.

22) The researchers hope to look at rare genetic variants in a follow-up study called SequenceME. This will get an even more detailed picture of the DNA differences associated with ME/CFS. Rare variants might have bigger effect sizes. www.actionforme.org.uk/sequenceme-f...

1) The DecodeME study compared DNA of ca. 15,000 ME/CFS patients and 250,000 controls and found significant differences in 8 regions of our genome. The Manhattan plot below shows the genes and chromosomes involved. Let’s unpack the results 🧵

I am so embarrassed for humanity. We had this disease eradicated. The process of keeping it that way was SO SIMPLE. And because of a bunch of idiots, and bunch of grifters making public health into an ideological football, here we are. Just a faceplant. A completely unforced error.

Clip: Professor Chris Ponting tells BBC Scotland the world’s largest genetic study of #MECFS has identified eight genome regions linked to the disease. He says the field is finally being kickstarted after years of stigma and neglect.

Clip: Tessa Munt MP tells Channel 4 News the government must fund #MECFS research. She says DecodeME proves it’s “not a made-up disease” — and that with recognition, if patients are not dismissed or treated like idiots, we will be a lot further forward.

Science: 'Possible genetic clues to ME/chronic fatigue syndrome identified in massive study' 'DNA analysis of more than 15,500 people with the debilitating condition identifies eight tentative “genetic signals” “We urgently need more research...." #DecodeME www.science.org/content/arti...

The fact that Long Covid research has so far yielded very little, and that so many patient representatives have resigned in disgust from most research programs, are two sides of the same coin. "Everything about us, in secret, behind closed doors" doesn't work here. It fails miserably.

What do these diseases have in common? Asthma Syphillis Multiple Sclerosis Myalgic Encephalomyelitis Ulcerative colitis High blood pressure Stomach ulcers Vaginal discharge Huntingtons chorea

A history that is just as much part of the present and the foreseeable future. I always see this framed as a historical thing. It's literally worse than it's ever been, psychosomatic ideology has never been more influential & harmful than today. Impunity is the main reason. No accountability.

Positive news! The Senate Appropriations bill came out and utterly rejected the Trump cuts to NIH/CDC. #MECFS funding is included in the appropriations language, in part due to @meactnet.bsky.social's battle to include it. A thread 🧵

Professionalisation is defined by two key elements: 1) rigorous training, and 2) accountability. Training is all well and good, but it's only because of accountability that any such training is worth a damn. There has to be consequences for failure, and a professional obligation to learn & adapt.

This is Isla at age 8. She died at age 18 with severe ME/CFS. Isla’s mum, who took care of Isla and tried to protect her from abusive medical professionals has been arrested. The state and medical system are trying to blame her for a death resulting from neglect and harmful medical practice.

Yet more Glonzo: the problem is not real, wait it is, but it's caused by some creature named Glonzo making people's tummies upset, definitely unrelated to the actual pandemic virus. Medicine is enshittifying just as quickly as the rest of society, falling for junk superstitions it invents itself.

Yeah, that was mainly covid itself.

With THREE days left in our summer fundraiser, we’re only $3,000 (!) and 12 (!!!) monthly donors away from our goal! Will you help us keep our vital #LongCOVID journalism going into 2026? the-sick-times.fundjournalism.org/donate/

3/4 of those points are basically the core principles of the biopsychosocial model of illness (the modern name for psychosomatic ideology) and its treatment model. Psychosomatic medicine was MAGA medicine before there was MAGA. The overlap in beliefs is almost perfect.

“I spent the past 5 years stoking a moral panic about DEI & cancel culture. I just realized this instant that’s being used as a pretext to destroy science & education. I will now complain about that without any introspection about how I may have contributed to this. I am a very serious thinker.”

People act like their tax dollars shouldn’t support disabled people and that if they do, it must be the most bare bones life imaginable. They want us to suffer. They want us in legislated poverty. Why? Ableism. They want us to die faster because they see us as “useless eaters”

Watching the scale of disaster and incompetence of medicine's complete mishandling of chronic illnesses like ME/CFS and Long Covid side-by-side with the disaster that is the Nazi Trump regime feels like seeing double. The same incompetence, cruelty and indifference to facts and evidence.

The UN defines solitary confinement as torture when it exceeds 22 hours a day for more than 15 days. Many people with severe ME are years or even decades into that level of isolation. It’s a humanitarian crisis.

Oh, there they go lying again. Same as it ever was. There is a very strong association between how medicine fails chronic illnesses like ME/CFS, and how a corrupt Nazi like Trump can gain so much power and dismantle US democracy. It's all the lying. Almost everyone thinks their own lies are OK.

Boycott even harder

Is it possible that all the crap going on at the NIH has quietly cancelled the entire Long COVID RECOVER program and we just haven't heard about it? Because out of the initial $1.15B funding, I can maybe count 5 small and uninteresting papers. If it hasn't been cancelled, how could we even tell?

Unsurprisingly, decades of telling millions of sick people to "fuck off with your made-up problems" is not a good recipe to solve those problems. Everything we know about this now, we knew 30 years ago. Nothing's changed. Nothing's changing. Lack of accountability and rewarding BS guarantee it.

You know what I think it is? I think that some folks were insulated from the worst of COVID by luck and privilege and all they experienced were the restrictions. And it so disturbed and angered them that they have never quite gotten over the disruptions to their cherished daily routines.

Nice were being extremely generous. The PACE trial was hugely fraudulent, lowering scores needed to be counted as recovered DURING the trial, so that a portion of participants were already "recovered" at enrollment. They were still counted as having recovered due to GET/CBT.

This Is One Of The Biggest Reasons To Support Universal Basic Income (UBI)…

Absolutely foolish to try to negotiate a deal with him. Canada had a deal that was negotiated with him. He tore it up.

Don't panic. 'Most' people will be fine. 🫠 "Not all measles cases will be serious, but ~ 1 in 10 have complications that impact the brain or cause pneumonia...around 1 in 10 measles cases require hospitalization, and around 1 in 10,000 cases can be fatal." #CalmMongering @tryangregory.bsky.social

Not that there were any expectations that this process would produce anything good, given who was involved, but even then this is shamefully inept. Everyone involved should be fired. They should even refund the money they clearly wasted doing nothing useful. Impotent fools, the whole lot of them.

Today @thesicktimes.bsky.social: the incredible @spichaksimon.bsky.social unpacks the newly released Canadian Guidelines for Post-COVID Condition, which experts are calling “contradictory” and “deeply concerning.” (1/5) thesicktimes.org/2025/07/08/e...

So McMaster/Cochrane decided to ignore the concerns & lived experience of the many people with ME/CFS and/or Long Covid who warned against including CBT & GET in their post-covid guidelines. Instead they listened to UK pseudoscientist Paul Garner who needs to stay the hell out of Canadian medicine.

Those groups definitely took advantage, but there's a natural alignment between the authoritarian types that elbow their way to positions of power in medicine via control over policy and guidance, and the authoritarian types in service to the oligarchs.

There's a false narrative that public health and IPAC did what they could with limited information, but it's complete fiction, manufactured to conceal their negligence. Here's the inquiry into the mismanagement of SARS-CoV-1, saying "treat it as airborne until you know for certain" decades ago:

The standard in health care forever remains: everything about us, in secret, behind closed doors. Technocracy is just as bad as aristocracy. Experts cannot make all the important decisions about the lives of strangers, they don't know enough and do not have real stakes in the outcomes.

“If we do UBI and pay everyone a salary, people will stop working.” OK: why do billionaires work? Why do rich people keep working when they have more than enough money to never work again?

Has the $1.15B RECOVER program published any research yet? I know a few tiny and mostly irrelevant studies have been published, but it barely amounts to what was typical of ME/CFS research pre-LC. Not that I'm expecting much, but even by that standard, this is just abysmal.

This shift didn't happen by magic. It has a single point of origin: the medical profession, in the form of the biopsychosocial model of illness, aka modern psychosomatic ideology. Medicine has become increasingly obsessed with blaming personal lifestyles for anything and everything.