Trial by Error, Guest Post: Questions About Professor Sharpe ’ s ‘ Special Ethics Seminar ’

by Steven Lubet On 1 June 2017, Professor Michael Sharpe presented the “Special Ethics Seminar” at Oxford University’s St Cross College. In his posted abstract, he asserted that “some areas of scholarship are politicised (U.K. spelling in original),” including “the role of psychiatric or psychological approaches in the treatment” of ME/CFS patients. Sharpe also likened ME/CFS patients to climate change deniers, claiming: The use of such co-ordinated pressure group action against science was prominently seen in the field of climate change research but is now emerging in other areas.  Chronic fatigue syndrome or myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME for short) is one of these.  The analogy is obviously aimed at critics of the PACE trial, of which Professor Sharpe was a principal investigator, but it is inaccurate, unfair, and insulting.  First, of course, there is a nearly universal consensus among scientists about the reality of climate change, supported by many decades’ worth of objective data, which places deniers among extreme outliers who are impervious to evidence. Sharpe’s theory that ME/CFS can be reversed through Cognitive Behavior Therapy and graded exercise, on the other hand, is shared within his own working group and accepted by many in the U.K. medical establishment, but it has been rejected or disregarded by highly credentialed researchers and scientists at major universities in the U.S., including Columbia, Stanford, and the University of C...
Source: virology blog - Category: Virology Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs