Marcie Zinn
New Member
Walitt's logic is pedantic and simplistic and he is angry. How is it that he got hired? Who thought he was competent? Just for the record, all of these words are synonymous: psychosomatic, somatization, hypochondriasis, psychogenic, and they all strongly imply malingering. He can use new words all he wants but he is ridiculing sick people and getting away with it, using government funds to do it, and we are paying for it. This is where our tax dollars are going.
It is really unfortunate that this guy will have so much influence now, being at NIH. We should not have to endure the type of punishment he is dishing out, especially since he is using only the part of the literature that fits his own biases. There is a lot of very powerful evidence against what he is saying, if he would take a minute to look at studies of other types of cognitive impairment. First, the brain always compensates for weakness in one system. A weak system produces compensation in another system, but the overall efficiency of the brain is reduced. This is all part of neural efficiency studies. In a system as complex as the human brain, disease produces failures in those portions of the circuits that are necessary in order to fully comprehend, and make decisions based on many types of information that must be integrated. Then we also know that in a diseased brain, the information flow is slower, meaning that much information is just lost. I cannot go into this much here, but when the brain is slowed down, it is very difficult to form new memories (learn). These things do not show up on neuropsychological tests. This type of knowledge is, however, easily obtainable and part of many research studies.The brain just does it naturally. The fix for this? Assess premorbid functioning, and assess compensatory mechanisms through connectivity analysis! For premorbid functioning, just assess what the person was like before illness, and yes, that can be done. So, why would a researcher overlook these well-known, important facts? Why would he "oops," forget?
How is it that people with CFS/ME can drive? That is also easy and the knowledge is accessible to even first year people in research. The answer is fluctuation of symptoms. All he has to do is look at the encephalitis literature or look at any cognitive impairment literature, and there it is--the prediction that sick people with any form of encephalitis, meningitis, cognitive impairment, even brain tumors, have symptoms that wax and wane. Valerie Harper has cancer in her meninges, and her symptoms wax and wane. Does that mean the cancer is cured? Is it just a perception of hers? Again, in diseased brains the numerous processes which produce efficiency are greatly reduced, but they vary around an average of some sort, so the patient has "good days," and "lousey days." Any person with cognitive impairment for any reason will tell you that.
The point here is that these "facts" are easily explainable and the answers are already in the literature. Walitt should read Luria and some of the neuropsychologists who had so little to work with that they became incredibly adept at reading their patients. They write about these problems profusely--how someone who is ill one day appears fine the next day, about how people compensate and how to spot it in an interview. They wrote about two people never presenting the same way, even with the same diagnosis.
These problems cannot be explained by diagnoses of exclusion, or diagnosis made in ignorance. I believe we should all call out individuals who put forth this bad science and hold them to much higher standards, which include all testing viewpoints, not just the ones which support their own personal biases.
It is really unfortunate that this guy will have so much influence now, being at NIH. We should not have to endure the type of punishment he is dishing out, especially since he is using only the part of the literature that fits his own biases. There is a lot of very powerful evidence against what he is saying, if he would take a minute to look at studies of other types of cognitive impairment. First, the brain always compensates for weakness in one system. A weak system produces compensation in another system, but the overall efficiency of the brain is reduced. This is all part of neural efficiency studies. In a system as complex as the human brain, disease produces failures in those portions of the circuits that are necessary in order to fully comprehend, and make decisions based on many types of information that must be integrated. Then we also know that in a diseased brain, the information flow is slower, meaning that much information is just lost. I cannot go into this much here, but when the brain is slowed down, it is very difficult to form new memories (learn). These things do not show up on neuropsychological tests. This type of knowledge is, however, easily obtainable and part of many research studies.The brain just does it naturally. The fix for this? Assess premorbid functioning, and assess compensatory mechanisms through connectivity analysis! For premorbid functioning, just assess what the person was like before illness, and yes, that can be done. So, why would a researcher overlook these well-known, important facts? Why would he "oops," forget?
How is it that people with CFS/ME can drive? That is also easy and the knowledge is accessible to even first year people in research. The answer is fluctuation of symptoms. All he has to do is look at the encephalitis literature or look at any cognitive impairment literature, and there it is--the prediction that sick people with any form of encephalitis, meningitis, cognitive impairment, even brain tumors, have symptoms that wax and wane. Valerie Harper has cancer in her meninges, and her symptoms wax and wane. Does that mean the cancer is cured? Is it just a perception of hers? Again, in diseased brains the numerous processes which produce efficiency are greatly reduced, but they vary around an average of some sort, so the patient has "good days," and "lousey days." Any person with cognitive impairment for any reason will tell you that.
The point here is that these "facts" are easily explainable and the answers are already in the literature. Walitt should read Luria and some of the neuropsychologists who had so little to work with that they became incredibly adept at reading their patients. They write about these problems profusely--how someone who is ill one day appears fine the next day, about how people compensate and how to spot it in an interview. They wrote about two people never presenting the same way, even with the same diagnosis.
These problems cannot be explained by diagnoses of exclusion, or diagnosis made in ignorance. I believe we should all call out individuals who put forth this bad science and hold them to much higher standards, which include all testing viewpoints, not just the ones which support their own personal biases.