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Letter by Dr John Greensmith in response to an article on Lightning Therapy 'curing' a girl with ME in the Derby Telegraph. See http://tinyurl.com/ymzd68
FALSE HOPES ON 'LIGHTNING'
22 December 2006
I Am sure that Jennifer Tonks was genuinely ill (Evening Telegraph, December 12) and I'm very pleased for her sake that she is now so well and I hope her recovery lasts.
But I very much doubt that it was the Lightning Process that cured her illness, whether her diagnosis of M.E. (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) was correct or not.
If the Lightning Process worked, do you think we would still have upwards of 120,000 M.E. sufferers, maybe 240,000 if you count all Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients?
I fear that stories like Jennifer's may raise false hopes and only succeed in lightening wallets.
Dr John H. Greensmith
ME Free For All
Bristol.
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1 comment:
This is (and has been for decades) a major problem -- unscrupulous people who prey on people desperate for a cure. They charge you thousands, then when their snake oil doesn't work, find some way to blame the patient instead of admitting that the only thing they've ever cured was having too much money in one's bank account.
Some years ago, I was told to see a doctor far enough away to require flying. In reading the fine print on his website, I discovered that his "cure rate" was somewhere around 20-25%. Clearly, he was curing the mild cases (or the misdiagnosed cases that were really mere fatigue or poor nutrition) and wasn't going to be able to help someone who was bad and getting worse.
However, he claimed you would not know whether the treatment was working for you until you had been on it for a minimum of six months. That was enough to convince me that he needed you to believe there would be no change for months, so that you would continue paying huge amounts every month until he'd taken every cent you had.
My CFS blog is at:
http://journals.aol.com/kmc528/Lifeasweknowit/ or you can visit my website, www.CFSfacts.org
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