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July school holidays can be tricky. The weather can be a bit unpredictable so here’s loads of indoor and outdoor activities to keep kids occupied for the July school holidays. Whether your kids are interested in art, books, science, movies or being outdoors, there’s something for everyone. And don’t forget to enter our school holiday giveway (at the bottom of the article). Your family could win a Family Entertainment Pass from Charlestown Square – perfect boredom buster!
Visit a local library during the holidays. There’s plenty of fun activities to keep kids occupied.
Newcastle Region Library
There’s loads of fun at Newcastle Region Library during the April school holidays
- Variety of Story Stomp storytimes for kids aged 3 to 7 at different branches including NAIDOC Week, STEAM, We’re Going on A Bear Hunt and Pirate Mischief.
- Makey Makey sessions – kids 8 to 13 can get creative with simple circuits.
- Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego – Kids can follow the clues to travel across the globe and around the library in search of master thief Carmen Sandiego.
- Map making with Liz Anelli.
- Spooky tails at night at Newcastle Library and Wallsend Library.
- The Great Lego ® Challenge – kids 5 to 12 can have fun making LEGO creations at different library branches.
Bookings required. For more information and to book holiday sessions, visit City of Newcastle website.
Lake Macquarie City Library
Lake Macquarie City Library has organised loads of fun school holiday activities in their libraries.
- Art & craft sessions including crafty kids Aussie animal collage
- Storytime – discover frogs at Speers Point Library and Morisset Library.
- VR Awaba: experience history through virtual reality at Morriset Library and Toronto Library.
- Wombat Stew puppet show and storytime at Toronto Library
- Traditional basket weaving for tweens and adults at Belmont Library with Aboriginal artist, Michelle Napanangka Earle from Kilipiynpiyn.
There’s also the Transformations: Art of the Scott Sisters’ exhibition at SEEN@Swansea. Harriet and Helena Scott were two of 19th-century Australia’s most prominent natural history illustrators. Beautiful and intricate, this stunning exhibition features framed reproduction watercolours, which form a fascinating record of the lives of Harriet (Hattie) and Helena (Nellie) Scott.
For more information and to book holiday sessions, visit Lake Macquarie City Council website.
Maitland City Library
Maitland City Library has a variety of fun workshops revolving around the theme “Arty Party”. It’s all about creativity, real and imagined for kids these holidays.
- Mosaic Magic – Kids can create their own masterful mosaic using recycled bottle tops.
- Wearable Tech: Kids can delve into the world of simple circuits, electronics, and design to make their own unique wearables such as armbands, headbands or badges.
- Colour Flavours – Create an own artistic self-portrait as kids turn a photo of themselves into art.
- Mixed Media Masterpieces – Have fun while exploring a variety of different media including paint, photos, fabrics and pencils.
- Drawing Nature – Budding artists will enjoy the Drawing Nature workshops presented by Gillian Hewitt from Imaginaturalist, where they use microscopes and magnifying glasses to observe nature and then create their own realistic work of art.
- Puffy Paint Events – Is it science or is it art? Learn how to make puffy paint and use it to create an awesome wall mural for the library.
- The Lion King: Passport to Africa – Inspired by the new Lion King movie, solve an African puzzle, create a traditional African mask and paint an African animal masterpiece.
For more information and to book holiday sessions, visit Maitland City Library website.
Enjoy free school holiday activities at Cessnock Library and Kurri Kurri Library.
- Aboriginal Art Workshop at Cessnock & Kurri Kurri Libraries – kids can learn about traditional indigenous art and its symbols in this hands-on workshop presented by local Aboriginal group Kiray Putjung. $5
- NAIDOC Storytime at Cessnock & Kurri Kurri Libraries – Special NAIDOC week storytime and art activities for kids aged 2 – 6.
- Fly me to the Moon Storytime at Kurri Kurri Library – Stories, songs and craft celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing for ages 2-6.
- It’s Rocket Science at Cessnock & Kurri Kurri Libraries – kids can test the principles behind rocket science in this hands-on science workshop.
- The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever Dance Practice at Cessnock Library – kids can be part of the worldwide celebration of The Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever – come along and learn the dance – find your inner Kate Bush!
- JD Howlett All New Magic Show! at Cessnock & Kurri Kurri Libraries – JD’s been in his magic workshop this year, tinkering away – what great new tricks will he have to show us? $7
- Stop Motion Animation Workshop at Cessnock & Kurri Kurri Libraries – Kids can learn the technique of stop motion animation using clay, lego and props.
- Art Attack Workshop at Cessnock & Kurri Kurri Libraries – Kids can create beautiful outer space scenes using printing and marbling techniques – wear an old shirt, as this could get messy!
Places limited, pre-booking essential. To book, visit Cessnock Library website or ring Cessnock Library 49 934399 or Kurri Kurri Library 49 371638 to enquire.
MUSEUMS & GALLERIES
Newcastle Art Gallery
Featured exhibitions: VIRGINIA CUPPAIDGE: the nature of abstraction & JAMES DRINKWATER: the sea calls me by name
The Newcastle Art Gallery has workshops for 5 to 12 year olds inspired by the current exhibitions.
School holiday activities 5 to 12 year olds include:
- Tissue paper painting workshop – Inspired by the VIRGINIA CUPPAIDGE: the nature of abstraction exhibition, kids will learn about the Skyspace Series with Gallery educators before drawing geometric shapes and learning to paint with tissue paper to produce colourful blended artworks.
- Sculpture building workshop – Drawing inspiration from the JAMES DRINKWATER: the sea calls me by name exhibition, kidswill create their very own sculptural works using pieces of cardboard and oil pastels.
- Art Cart every Saturday and Sunday morning.
For more information and to book holiday sessions, visit Newcastle Art Gallery website.
Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery
Lake Macquarie Art Gallery is featuring a couple of children’s workshops during the school holidays that will be held at Belmont Library (while renovations at the Art Gallery are ongoing)
School holiday activities include:
- Traditional basket weaving for tweens (10 – 14) at Belmont Library with Aboriginal artist, Michelle Napanangka Earle from Kilipiynpiyn.
- Traditional basket weaving for teens 14+ at Belmont Library with Aboriginal artist, Michelle Napanangka Earle from Kilipiynpiyn.
For more information and to book holiday sessions, visit Lake Macquarie City Council website.
Maitland Regional Art Gallery
Enjoy ‘Cool Art July’ school holiday fun and activities for all the family at MRAG during the holidays.
- Drop into MRAG these school holidays to do a series of self-directed activities throughout the gallery. Every day there will be something to do at MRAG!
- Crack the code in one of the Code Breaker activities!
- Visit the front desk and ask for Code Breaker 1 & 2,Colour Code Breaker or Search for the Golden Poo
Wander through MRAG and see the new exhibition. Operation Art is an exhibition of 50 selected artworks by students from schools across New South Wales who have been invited to create uplifting works for other children. The exhibition is an initiative of The Children’s Hospital at Westmead in association with the NSW Department of Education and will include artworks by students from Hunter and the Central Coast schools.
There’s also Free Art Sundays to enjoy. Every Sunday families are invited to drop into the art gallery for free art activities inspired by the exhibitions on display. Our activities are designed for kids of all ages, and as a family you can all join in and get creative. Each activity takes around half an hour to complete.
For more information, visit Maitland Regional Art Gallery website.
Have fun at Newcastle Museum during the holidays with activities reflecting current exhibition.
The new exhibition SPY: Espionage in Australia. Become a top-secret agent and solve the mysteries at our new family friendly exhibition. Explore special spy equipment and test your skills at codebreaking and reading invisible ink. This free family-friendly exhibition runs from 12 July to 15 September. The exhibition featrures free SPY MISSION and SPY STORY adventure trails. Kids can find clues, read the stories and discover what it takes to be a spy.
School holiday activities include:
- Detectives Table Workshop – Kids can get hands on and delve deeper into the secret life of a spy at an activity table at Newcastle Museum. Learn the tricks of the trade and become an official Museum Detective. Wednesday 10 & 17 July from 10.30am – 1.30pm. Family friendly, parental supervision required. Free.
- Shake & Quake Science Shows on Tuesday 9 & 16 July and Thursday 11 & 18 July at 11:15am, 12:15pm and 1:15pm. Rock on at the new family-friendly science show! Find out why there is custard inside the Earth, learn about how rocks can fold, snap, melt and explode, and have some fun with liquid nitrogen as Newcastle Museum explores volcanoes and earthquakes these school holidays. Free but parental supervision required.
Newcastle Museum is open every day during the school holidays from 10am – 5pm. For more information and to book holiday sessions, visit Newcastle Museum website.
SCHOOL HOLIDAY WORKSHOPS
Rhubarb Jam Productions
Put on a show these school holidays. At Rhubarb Jam Productions, they offer vacation care of a slightly different flavour…. Their workshops are designed to help your children connect with others, develop their creativity and skyrocket their confidence. All through a collaborative process combining singing, dancing, acting & sets and prop making to put on a unique performance.
Children aged 5-12 years are invited to create a MONSTERS INC themed production at Kotara South Public School. Their workshop program includes drama, dance, singing and sets and prop making. All the elements are co-ordinated to create a performance at the end of the 5 days under the guidance of their professional teachers. They help the ideas of all participants come to life!
There are 3, 4 & 5 day enrolment options & sibling discounts are also available. Places are limited.
For more information, visit the Rhubarb Jam website.
Hudson Street Hum
Join Hudson Street Hum for a cross-disciplinary workshop combining clay making and creative writing during the holidays. Your young creative (suitable for 7+) will start off the workshop getting messy with their hands. They’ll be creating clay monsters using basic hand-building techniques such as pinching, pressing and moulding. Hudson Street Hum finds making and drawing things is a great way to begin the planning process when writing stories! After the kids have created their monsters, Hudson Street Hum will take them on a fun creative journey using storytelling techniques to help them bring their clay monsters to life.
Hudson Street Hum is also offering Skate Deck Art workshops for kids 8 – 12 on Tuesday 9 July Hudson Street Hum and Skate Deck Art workshops for kids 13+. Kids can kick start the school holiday creative juices with a rad skate deck art workshop at Hudson Street Hum. Resident skater, artist and educator, Lu Quade, will share tips and tricks on design elements to make skate decks pop! Kids can bring your ideas to life using a variety of different techniques and materials. Then best of all, they get to take home their very own, personalised deck ready to hang on your bedroom wall. Order for 2 (friend or sibling) and get a $20 discount.
For more information, visit the Hudson Street Hum website.
Hive Creative Studios
All Aboard Hive’s amazing themed workshops that include art, drama and musical theatre with the Hive’s team of talented creatives.
Choose from an exciting range of options including: Perfect Potions (make your own bath bombs, body scrubs, lip gloss and more!), Monster Slime Masterchef (Tie-Dye & sculpting), Greatest Showman (musical theatre) Drama with their NIDA trained drama teachers, Shipwrecked & Moana Sky-themed Painting And much more!
Hive workshops are held in their purpose built classrooms at the Hive in Charlestown. Their centre is renowned for its highly skilled and talented teachers and for being a safe, clean environment for children. High staff ratio and small group sizes ensure that each student receives quality instruction. They look forward to being part of your child’s creative journey!
For more information, visit the Hive Creative Studios website.
ANIMALS & NATURE
Here’s some school holidays activities at Blackbutt Reserve.
- Crafty Creatures school holiday fun. Visit Blackbutt and make your favourite clay creature. 2 sessions 1pm & 1:30pm Monday to Friday. $3 per child – all ages. No bookings required. Pay at kiosk on the day.
- Reptile Show – weekends and school holiday at 11am for $3 per person. No bookings required. Pay at kiosk on the day.
- Feeding times – every day – free – 10.30am Wombats / 10.45am bird brunch / 1.30pm Nocturnal animals / 2pm Koalas.
Hunter Wetlands Centre
Get outdoors and visit the Hunter Wetlands Centre in Sandgate. There’s plenty of tracks to go walking, a discovery trail, dipnetting and a super fun playground. Bring your bike and ride around the site. Hire a canoe and view the site from the water. Closed in shoes and insect repellent recommended. Adults: $8; Children 3-12 years $5 ; Under 3 free.
They also have some special activities planned to help you get to know the Wetlands and its residents better.
- Guided Canoe Tour for Families – Mondays 8 & 15 July – $20.00 per person. 10.30am – 12.30pm Conditions apply. Bookings essential.
- Behind the Scenes Tour (8 – 12 year olds) – Wednesday 10 July – $20. 10am – 12 noon. Bookings essential.
- Waterbird Drawing Workshop (8 – 12 year olds) – Thursday 11 July – $15. 9.30am – 11am. Bookings essential.
- Buggy Tours for Families (30 minutes) – Tuesdays (9 & 16) and Thursdays (11 & 18) $5 per person. 9.30am – 12.30pm. Book at Reception on the day.
- Birdwatching at Water Ribbon Pond. Mon 8, Thurs 11, Tues 16 & Thurs 18. 10am – 12 noon FREE
Go whale watching
If you don’t feel like heading north to see the whales, hang out locally. May to August is whale watching season and Lake Macquarie and Newcastle are on the whale migration route. It’s estimated that 10,000 humpback whales pass this region heading north between May and August. Hang out at Nobbys Headland, Newcastle Beach, Merewether, Redhead or Dudley Beach and see if you can spot passing whale.
You can also explore the coast of Newcastle with CoastXP, the adventure boat tour and see whales migrating up the coast. June and July are peak whale watching months. Newy with Kids did a tour last year and saw seals, dolphins & humpback whales as well as travelling past our beautiful coastline.
Play in the snow
If your kids like to be out and about, there’s loads of events and activities to choose from.Enjoy all things winter without having to travel to the snow at Snow Time in the Garden at Hunter Valley Gardens. Your family can enjoy ice skating, playing in the snow, building snowmen, ice tobogganing and the opportunity to see ice sculpting. This three week event runs from Saturday 29 June to Sunday 21 July 2019.
Inflatables on the Green at Club Charlestown is back for the July school holidays from Monday 8 July to Sunday 14 July from 10am – 2pm. Entry is $5 per child per day or $15 per child to come for unlimited entry over the duration of event.
There’s also a daily sausage sizzle for an easy lunch option or the bistro is open for lunch. Kids Eat Free is available every Monday – when 1 adult purchases a main meal, up to 2 children may eat free. Advance bookings are not required – you can just turn up and purchase day passes for a fun family day out.
Visit a new playground
There’s been loads of playgrounds opened in the past year like Stockton Active Hub in Stockton, Fletcher Park Reserve in Adamstown and Cressington Way Reserve in Wallsend. For more information, visit the Newy with Kids Parks & Playground list.
It’s also an ideal time of year to get out and go for a family walk. Check out the Family Walks section of Newy with Kids. New articles have been added about the Stockton Shipwreck Walk and Lake Macquarie Sculpture Walk.
Disney on Ice is an entertaining outing for the whole family featuring your favourite Disney characters. Grab your mouse ears and get ready for a party as Disney On Ice celebrates Mickey and Friends skates into Newcastle again. This year, Moana and Maui will be skating around the ice as part of the highly anticipated addition of Disney’s Moana to the show. The show also features exciting moments from Disney Pixar’s Toy Story, Finding Dory, Moana, Inside Out and Frozen and will leave the whole family with memories that will last a lifetime. The Newcastle shows run from Friday 12 July to Sunday 14 July 2019 (during school holidays) at Newcastle Entertainment Centre.
Hog Watts is back this July school holidays with a brand new magical adventure for Potter fans young & old! Hog Watts is an immersive lunch/dinner & show experience set within the magical walls and halls of 48 Watt St. Family matinee sessions are almost sold out! There’s also 18+ evening events for those who want to leave the kids at home. The event runs from Friday 12 July until Sunday 21 July.
The Cat in the Hat stage show is coming to Newcastle during the July school holidays. The show based on Dr Seuss classic book is scheduled for Wednesday July 10 with two shows at 10:30am and 1pm at Civic Theatre Newcastle. Tickets start from $25.
Newcastle Brickfest is Newcastle’s first and longest running LEGO Fan event running on Saturday 13 July and Sunday 14 July. It’s a community event, created by local volunteer LEGO fans, for LEGO Fans of all ages, showcasing LEGO creations and collections from across NSW. It features 60 exhibitors and over 180 tables of exhibits to enjoy. This is a family friendly, not for profit event which supports local Newcastle schools and charities. The event will be held at Newcastle Racecourse. $5 per person. Kids under 2 are free. There will be limited tickets at the door ($8 each).
Young Peoples Theatre, a not-for-profit youth theatre company in Newcastle is presenting The Hundred and One Dalmatians performance during the school holidays.This production is 2 hours in length including a 20-minute interval. Fun for the family and suitable for all ages! Tickets start from $20. YPT is also having a reduced sensory performance on 28 July. This performance is especially designed for children and adults with ASD, ADD, ADHD, dementia, intellectual disabilities and sensory sensitivities.
SHOPPING CENTRE ACTIVITIES
Charlestown Square is turning 40 this year and is inviting the public to celebrate this nostalgic milestone in Newcastle history starting July 1.
Get ready to party like it’s 1979!
- Pop-up roller skating rink situated in Centre Court during the July school holidays. Tickets are $5 for a 45 minute session. Book online or purchase in-centre. Plus, received a $5 off Dymocks voucher with every roller skating ticket.
- Enjoy a 70s rolling skating party on Saturday 13 July. Expect 70s makeovers, Charlie’s retro lolly bar, roller skating performances and funky DJ beats.
- Hang in Charlie’s Disco Lounge. Snap a groovy baby 70’s selfie at Charlies Disco Lounge -a funky disco lounge for capturing the perfect insta pic. 70’s backdrop, costumes, mirror balls and funky beats will set the scene for a snap destined for mega-likes. Don’t forget to share it with hashtag #charlieturns40 for your chance to win a $250 Charlestown Square Gift Card.
- Take a trip down memory lane. Come and check out 40 years of funky memories in the giant photo cube exhibition located on Level 1 near the Customer Service Desk.
For more information, visit the Charlestown Square website.
To keep kids entertained these school holidays, get them an Entertainment Pass from the Customer Service Desk at Charlestown Square. (There’s an additional pass for adults). These passes are great for savings at Reading Cinemas, Megamania, STRIKE Bowling and Timezone.
On sale for $39, the pass includes:
- 1 x movie ticket (under 15 years) at Reading Cinemas – excludes 3D movies, TITAN XC and Gold Lounge
- 1 x game of Bowling at Strike or a 9 Hole Round at Holey Moley
- 60 minutes of Quickplay at Megamania
- 10 Yellow Swiper Games at Timezone
- 1 x Little Beef Burger or 1 x Little Chicken Burger with chips at Ribs & Burgers
What’s great about these passes is that you decide how you want to use them. You can use the pass in one day for a mega-filled fun day. Or you can use them over multiple days or even over months as the passes don’t expire until December 2019.
Stuck for ideas to keep the kids entertained these school holidays? Visit Wallsend Village for FREE Winter-themed school holiday activities. Kids can personalise their own winter-themed porcelain dinner plate. This is a wonderful keepsake that can be used by children for years to come. Workshops run on a drop-in basis from 10am to 1pm on Tuesday 16 July, Wednesday 17 July and Thursday 18 July outside Aldi. For more information visit the Wallsend Village website.
Take advantage of Stay n’ Play at Stockland Jesmond opposite Cooper’s Cafe near the main entrance off Blue Gum Road from 10am to 2pm daily from Monday 8 July to Friday 12 July. Your children will be cared for by qualified childcare professionals with plenty of fun activities to keep them entertained including arts, craft, toys, dress ups and books. The service is free for the first hour and $10 per child for each hour after. Stockland recommend a maximum of two hours though to avoid little ones from missing their carer too much. PLUS when you book in your child you receive a FREE coffee which you can enjoy on the day. This gives you a chance to get the groceries done or find that outfit for the upcoming special occasion or some timeout to get that skin treatment you’ve had your eye on, or perhaps refresh your look with new nails or a haircut.
There’s also school holiday workshops in celebration of NAIDOC week: ‘Interwoven’ Traditional Aboriginal Weaving presented by Speaking in Colour. Kids can learn about Traditional Aboriginal weaving and then create a keepsake woven bracelet to take home! There’s also get crafty sessions at Centre Court and free facepainting fun.
There’s also free Art Appreciation Workshops in celebration of NAIDOC week on Thursday 11 July from 10am-1pm in Centre Court. Children will learn about traditional Aboriginal art and then create a contemporary keepsake to take home on the day! No bookings required.
For more information, visit the Stockland Jesmond website.
NEW RELEASE FAMILY MOVIES
Want to take the kids to the movies during the holidays? As usual, there’s a few new-release family-friendly movies to choose from including the much anticipated Toy Story 4
- Rating: PG
- Release Date: May 23, 2019
- Duration: 128 minutes
- Description: “Aladdin” is the exciting tale of the charming street rat Aladdin, the courageous and self-determined Princess Jasmine and the Genie who may be the key to their future
- Trailer: Click here to watch the trailer
The Secret Life of Pets 2
- Rating: PG
- Release Date: June 20, 2019
- Duration: 86 minutes
- Description: The Secret Life of Pets 2 will follow summer 2016’s blockbuster about the lives our pets lead after we leave for work or school each day.
- Trailer: Click here to watch the trailer
Toy Story 4
- Rating: G
- Release Date: June 20, 2019
- Duration: 85 minutes
- Description: Woody and Buzz embark on a quest to find Woody’s romantic interest, Bo Peep.
- Trailer: Click here to watch the trailer
WIN A FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT PASS FROM CHARLESTOWN SQUARE
Thanks to our friends at Charlestown Square, Newy with Kids is giving away a Charlestown Square Family Entertainment Pass which include a movie & popcorn at Reading Cinemas, bowling at Strike or mini golf at Holey Moley + lots more. Fill in the form below and tell us your favourite thing about school holidays to be in the running. Enter before midnight Sunday 30 June 2019. (BE SURE TO FILL IN THE RECAPTCHA TO SUBMIT YOUR ENTRY)
CONGRATULATIONS L. CHANNON
Giveaway Terms and Conditions
- The name of the promotion is: Charlestown Square Giveaway
- The promoter is Newy with Kids in conjunction with Charlestown Square
- The conditions of entry are: answer the question provided, one entry per person, contact details must be provided in above form.
- Employees, immediate family members, retailers, suppliers, associated companies and agencies are not eligible to enter.
- The giveaway will close on Sunday 30 June 2019 at midnight (Newcastle time). Comments submitted after this time will not be considered for the giveaway.
- This is a game of skill. The winners will be awarded based on the strength of their creative answer to the question “What is your favourite thing about school holidays?”
- Judging will be done by Reena of Newy with Kids.
- The prize will be in the form of a Charlestown Square Family Entertainment Pass (4 passes)
- The results of the giveaway will be published on this website on Tuesday 2 July 2019.
- Prizes are not redeemable for cash and are non-transferable. The total prize value is $160.
- The competition is open to Australian residents only.
- If for any reason beyond the Promoter’s control the agreed prize is not available a product of equal or greater value will be provided.
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For the first time the state government has candidly admitted that there is corruption at commercial tax department VAT checkposts. Industries minister Saurabh Dalal in an interaction with Gujarat Sales Tax Bar Association (GSTBA) has appealed to traders to come forward to lodge complaints against errant officers.
“I promise you a system where you can lodge your complaints confidentially, ” Dalal said. Dalal promised that the commercial tax department would not ask traders to submit returns manually in just one month if they filed e-returns.
In fact, commercial tax department chief commissioner PK Pujari, present during the meet, said that registration number will be allotted to any trader as soon an e-application is filed while the verification process of confirming the trader’s antecedents can continue for the next one month. “We are all for adopting the Maharashtra system of registration but we are looking into legalities,” says Pujari.
Many traders from Jamnagar had said that they were given receipts 90 days after filing their VAT returns. Punjari made a note of the problem and promised a solution.
Traders, lawyers and tax consultants complained that the MICR facility for getting tax refunds was not extended to Rajkot while the rest of the state had it. Pujari admitted that he was not aware and that MICR facility would be extended immediately.
A number of representatives from 17 districts at the meet said in unison that commercial tax officers had been demanding a security deposit Rs 2 lakh for registration purposes, when the law requires just Rs 50,000.
“I am aware of this problem now. I would ensure that registration of new traders is made transparent, ” Dalal said. Goods and Service Tax Academy chairman DM Vasavda made an appeal to Pujari for speedy disposal of VAT appeals. “Some traders have to wait six months for a decision. This hinders their business,” Vasavda said.

domain: law


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Extracts from A New and Simple Definition of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and a New Simple Definition of Chronic F ti S d As presented at the Invest in ME London Conference of May 12, 2006 by Dr. Byron Hyde MD This is an abridged version of Dr. Byron Hyde’s booklet entitled A New and Simple Definition of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and a New Simple Definition of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome & A Brief History of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis & An Irreverent History of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Which is available from the Nightingale Foundation at http://www.nightingale.ca Invest in ME have been given permission to use extracts from Dr. Hyde’s booklet. The views expressed in this document are not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Trustees of Invest in ME. A new and simple definition of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and a new simple definition of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome As presented at the Invest in ME London Conference of May 12, 2006 by Byron Hyde MD: This material will be available on the Nightingale's new website http://www.nightingale.ca from the summer of 2006 or earlier. I would like to start by proposing that M.E. be defined simply as being consistent with the majority of the ten following diagnostic features: Myalgic Encephalomyelitis is: 1 A variable and biphasic acute onset disease, 2 Primary Infection Phase: The first phase is an epidemic or endemic infectious disease generally with an incubation period of 4 to 7 days, where in most, but not all cases, an infection is evident. 3 Chronic Phase: The second and chronic phase follows closely on the first phase, usually within two to seven days, and is characterized by a measurable diffuse change in the function of the CNS. This is the persisting disease that most characterizes M.E. and is demonstrated by the following: 4 Testable Brain Changes: This second phase becomes chronic and is characterized by various measurable and clinical dysfunctions of the cortical or cortical and sub cortical brain. If the patient's illness is not persistently measurable using SPECT, PET or QEEG and/or Neuropsychological changes then it is not M.E. These changes can be roughly characterized as to severity: 1. Type 1: where one side of the cortex is involved. These patients have the best chance of spontaneous recovery. 2. Type 2: where both sides of the cortex are involved: These patients have the least chance of spontaneous recovery. 3. Type 3: where both sides of the cortex, and either one or all of the posterior chamber organs, the Pons and Cerebellum, the sub cortical and brain stem structures are involved. Type 3 are the most severely affected patients and the most likely to be progressive or see little or no improvement with time. 5 Pain Syndromes: The pain syndromes associated with the acute and chronic phases of M.E. may include (a) severe headaches of a type never previously experienced, (b) often associated with neck rigidity and occipital pain, (c) retro-orbital eye pain, (d) migratory muscle and arthralgia pain, (e) cutaneous hypersensitivity and (f) fibromyalgia type pain. These pain syndromes tend to decrease over time. 6 Neuropsychological Changes: There are neuropsychological changes that are measurable and demonstrate short-term memory loss, cognitive dysfunctions, increased irritability, confusion, and perceptual difficulties. There is usually rapid decrease in these functions after any physical or mental activity. This feature may improve over a period of years in patients with adequate financial and social support. 7 Major Sleep Dysfunction: including all forms of sleep dysfunction and day time alertness and sleep reversals. 8 Muscle Dysfunction: This feature may be due to vascular dysfunction or peripheral nervous or spinal dysfunction and includes both pain and rapid loss of strength of muscle function after moderate physical or mental activity. This feature tends to improve over years. 9 Vascular Dysfunction: This is the most obvious dysfunction when looked for and probably is the cause behind a significant number of the above complaints. Vascular change is most evident in patients with: a. POTS: severe postural hypotension. b. Cardiac irregularity: on minor positional changes or after minor physical activity, including inability for the heart to increase or decrease in speed and pump volume in response to increase or decrease in physical activity. c. Raynaud's Disease: vasoconstriction, blanching, coldness and pain of extremities. This is in part the cause for temperature dysfunctions seen in M.E. d. Bowel Dysfunction: vascular dysfunction may be the single most causal basis behind bowel dysfunction when it occurs 10 Endocrine Dysfunction: This feature is common and tends to be a late appearance and is most obvious in the: a. Pituitary-thyroid axis: This is common. Changes in serum TSH, FTI, FT4, Microsomal Ab., PTH, Calcium and phosphorus rarely occur until one or more years after illness onset and usually only after several years. This can be followed by ultrasound of the thyroid gland where a steady shrinking of the thyroid gland occurs with or without the development of non-serum positive Hashimoto's thyroiditis (a seeming contradiction of terms) and a significant increase in thyroid malignancy. Serum positive changes occur only after years. b. Pituitary-adrenal axis changes: this finding is infrequent. c. Pituitary-ovarian axis changes: d. Pituitary- (adrenal?)-Bladder dysfunction: occurs frequently in the early disease in some people. It is unknown if the cause is due to this link. I would like to propose that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome should be simply diagnosed as follows: NEW DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA FOR CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME The patient has: 1. A gradual onset fatigue syndrome, 2. This is usually due to a missed major disease in which common things are common: i.e. the patient has: a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. k. l. m. n. o. Missed Missed Missed Missed Missed Missed Missed Missed Missed Missed Missed Missed Missed Missed Missed cardiac disease, malignancy, vascular disease, brain lesion either of a vascular or space occupying lesion, test positive rheumatologic disease, test negative rheumatologic disease, endocrine disease, physiological disease, genetic disease, chronic infectious disease, pharmacological or immunization induced disease, social disease, drug use disease or habituation, dietary dysfunction diseases, psychiatric disease. The reasons for these two proposals are implicit in the history of these two terms and are as follows: A HITCH HIKER'S GUIDE TO THE HISTORY OF MYALGIC ENCEPHALOMYELITIS & CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME (This section may be seen in full by visiting the Nightingale Foundation’s site at www.nightingale.ca) Our history starts with the first known recorded modem history of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. Atypical Poliomyelitis 1932: The first recorded major epidemic of a disease phenomenon identical to Myalgic Encephalomyelitis occurred in 1932 in California. Dr Alexander G. Gilliam who later became Professor of Epidemiology of Johns Hopkins Medical School documented this epidemic that destroyed the lives of a multitude of doctors, nurses and health care workers in the Las Angeles County General Hospital, at the time, the largest hospital in the world. Gilliam called this disease atypical poliomyelitis. It was a logical conclusion since it was associated with a large epidemic of close to 100,000 people from San Francisco to the Mexican border at San Diego. The curious thing about this epidemic of "polio" is that very few people actually died. Dr Alberto Marinacci, employing a Universal Electromyography Machine that unfortunately no longer exists, was able to demonstrate diffuse peripheral nerve changes in these patients, different from, but similar to a mild form of Guillam-Barre Syndrome. Disease Resembling Poliomyelitis: 1947-1948: Akureyri Disease: This epidemic was described by J Sigurjonsson in Iceland as a Disease Resembling Poliomyelitis. Much to the disagreement of Sigurjonsson and other physicians in Iceland this disease came to be called Akureyri Disease. It was very similar if not identical to later epidemics of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. This epidemic started in a local residential school that was located a few hundred feet north of the hospital refuge dump. The epidemic started shortly after the return to school for the autumn session and probably followed significant immunization. Since the epidemic started among school children before it spread to the adults and then to neighbouring towns, there should be no controversy that this type of illness effects children. As in the LA epidemic, the disease manifested both diffuse central and peripheral nervous system symptoms. It was termed an "itis" or an inflammation of the nervous system. This was the first epidemic to demonstrate that we were dealing with a diffuse brain injury and specifically in the area that affected normal sleep and normal muscle physiology. Almost no patients died but all were left disabled and in many cases the disability persists until today, 55 years later. Three children from this epidemic in the town of Friedrickshavn, became moribund and were unable to leave their beds, they eventually died of Parkinson's-like illness and were autopsied. Parkinson's Disease is almost unheard of in children. There can be no doubt that we were dealing with a diffuse inflammatory brain injury and at least some of these cases, involved the basal ganglia. However for the large number of those who fell ill in Akureyri and neighbouring towns on the north shore of Iceland, the symptoms and signs were those of Myalgic Encephalitis and it was a disease that trapped both child and adult in its icy grips. All true disease processes have variability from minor to major illness, from acute to chronic sequelae. I have seen at least two children in the UK who fell ill with M.E. but could have just as well be diagnosed as Von Economo's Encephalitis-like or Parkinson's-like illness. Encephalomyelitis of Unknown Origin 1955: Cumberland: Dr Wallis did autopsies in the 1955 Cumberland epidemic. This was an epidemic that once again started with children in a boarding school in the early fall and spread to the near-by residents. This publication of one of the most extensive early investigations will appear on our Nightingale website later this year. It might be of interest in repeating the onset symptoms of children and adults who fell ill in 1955: Wallis' Onset Symptoms 1. The patients usually stated they thought they had caught a chill or a touch of the "flu", the illness starting immediately or on some occasions, a few days after this infectious illness, 2. Excessive tiredness, finding normal work a burden to them, 3. Difficulty in walking due to legs feeling a loss of power, 4. Sweating, unrelated to work done or the ambient temperature, 5. Difficulty in keeping warm, 6. Bouts of dizziness and unsteadiness, 7. Intermittent headaches and neuralgic pains, often around the eye or down the neck, 8. Insomnia, 9. Loss of clarity of thought and concentration, 10. Aching in the legs and back of an intermittent nature, 11. Pins and needles in hands and feet, 12. Blurred Vision. Wallis' Frequent, Later Neurological Signs and Symptoms 1. Paraesthesiae (burning, prickling or formication often in the absence of an external stimulus), 2. Hyperaesthesia (increased pain to touch) and hyperthesiae (increased pain), 3. Impairment of taste or smell, 4. Vertigo, 5. Blurred vision, 6. Loss of concentration or depression, 7. Poor recent memory, diminished powers of abstract thought, 8. Impairment of co-ordination and unsteadiness, 9. General weakness, 10. Inversion of sleep rhythm, 11. Abnormal perception of taste and smell, 12. Visual acuity considered impaired but no objective evidence, 13. Diplopia (double vision) in upward and lateral gaze, 14. Sluggish pupil reactions to light and accommodation, 15. Motor dysfunctions, generally muscular weakness, 16. Ataxia with positive Romberg, 17. Syncope without any epileptic evidence, 18. Tremor in half the cases that usually disappeared after several months, 19. Co-ordination impaired with breaking of crockery, difficulty walking through a doorway, pouring a cup of tea, 20. Reflexes: normal or decreased initially, normal or increased or brisk later. Anyone with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis will recognize these epidemic features as a classical example of M.E. Brain Pathological Changes: Deaths never occurred with the onset illness but three cases followed shortly after onset. Two patients with M.E. who died subsequent to the M.E. illness demonstrate diffuse micro-haemorrhagic injury of the brain and this occurred around the small blood vessels. In the second case, changes occurred around the basal ganglia as in Akureyri, but this second case was associated with Wilson's disease. Wilson's disease can be confused with M.E./CFS like illness since it has many of the same clinical characteristics. Nevertheless, these are not unlike some of the areas of abnormality noted in brain SPECT scans. But the samples are not sufficient or clear enough to be certain that these are from the ME disease itself. Discussion of the Akureyri and the Cumberland Epidemic Features Both epidemics started with children and went on to involve both children and adults. Both epidemics involved an infectious disease onset and a following neurological illness that had features of both central and peripheral neurological anomalies. Both epidemics involved injuries consistent with the basal ganglia injury (as well as frontal and anterior left parietal lobe injury). It might therefore be worthwhile to briefly mention some of the basal ganglia associated diseases. These illnesses are not the same as M.E. and in general are much worse but they do have some similar characteristics. The basal ganglia associated illnesses include (a) Parkinson's Disease, (b) Wilson's Disease (the copper metabolism illness), (c) Von Economo's Encephalitis, (See the book Awakening) (d) nerve gas injury, (e) carbon monoxide poisoning and (f) some Gulf War illnesses. Though different from Myalgic Encephalomyelitis the nonprogressive features do share a very similar spectrum of symptoms and signs. All are associated with various degrees of sleep dysfunction, rapid exhaustion, muscle pains and weakness, loss of coordination, language difficulty, and neurological symptoms. Brain Injury Associations: It is curious, that no neurologists or physicians have any problem associating these symptoms with brain pathology in the above disease processes but when they occur in M.E. patients they can make the obvious association. Children Fall Ill with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: Knowing about the Akureyri epidemic and the Cumberland epidemic, it is curious that there should be any debate in the UK or anywhere else that M.E. is also a disease of children. In March 2006 I was in court giving evidence for a M.E. patient and Dr Salit who frequently sees M.E. patients for the insurance industry and who attended against the patient, made the statement that children do not fall ill with M.E. He uses the term CFS since as he stated, no physician of merit uses Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. He obviously does not appear to know the history of this illness. The diagnostic problem of identification of M.E. illness is totally social. Why are these children and their parents too often conveniently diagnosed as psychiatric cases? Rather than separating the children from the mothers, rather than calling the parents examples of Munchausen’s-by-proxy they could be and should be investigated and they are not. How should these children and adults be investigated? If they truly have brain dysfunction as I say they do, then their brain function should be abnormal, this should be measurable and these patients should be investigated. Only if we subgroup these patients can we begin to scientifically treat them. It should also be remembered that the body, its systems (such as the gastrointestinal system, the muscular system, the endocrine system, the cardiovascular and vascular systems) and its organs are dependent and their actions largely controlled by the brain. If the brain is physiologically injured, then so is the body. Depending upon which parts of the brain are physiologically injured different parts of the body will also be caused to malfunction. Today, any children or adults with the symptom picture of chronic ongoing Myalgic Encephalomyelitis do not have to die in order for us to examine their brains; we can examine their brains with technological instruments. Let us for this moment only consider the children. All of these children, and the medical and scientific community as well, could benefit if funds were dedicated for the complete and integrated physical and technological examination of these victims. I call them victims since I believe the medical community as a whole have abandoned them, both children and adults. Lack of progress in developing both scientific and medical understanding and treatment protocols are what I believe to be the result of medical and psychiatric arrogance. It is my belief that the technological medical community should be funded to do a complete cardiovascular, neurovascular, thyroid and endocrine, and neurophysiological assessment of say: • • • 250 of these children patients and 250 adults with acute onset M.E. and 250 gradual onset CFS type patients The neurophysiological examination side should include (a) brain SPECT scans, (b) Xenon brain SPECT scans, (c) PET scans, (d) QEEG neuropsychological scans as well as (e) MRI scans since some of these children will be missed cases of multiple sclerosis or other space occupying processes or CNS injuries. This might seem excessive to some, but only if such an organized and structural approach is taken will we ever be able to come to grips with these disease processes and separate them out, one nom another. I have heard so many physicians say that this is too expensive. Yet the cost to examine all 750 patients would definitely be a fraction of the cost of building one atomic bomb, and less than the cost of building one jet war plane. Where are our priorities? • • • In the USA $5.5 trillion have been spent on building atomic weapons since 1940. That is more than the Americans have spent on Medicare, veterans' benefits and the total outlays on Social Security in the USA since 1940. (Source: Peter Passell," New York Times, July 9, 1998.) An F/A-18 in 1997 cost the military $28 million, according to the Blue Angels' official Web site. You can buy this used F/A 18 without armaments on EBay today for only 9 million dollars. Or you can purchase a Russian Sukhoi-30MKK as just sold to the Chinese for $35 million each. (Source: Google) Estimated outside cost of a comprehensive program to examine 750 ME patients: 500,000 pounds sterling yearly for 5 years. Where are our priorities? Myalgic Encephalomyelitis 1955-1957: The term was jointly invented by Dr A Melvin Ramsay who coined this name in relation to the Royal Free Hospital epidemics that occurred in London from 1955 to 1957 and by Dr John Richardson who observed the same type of illness in his rural practice in Newcastle-upon- Tyne area during the same period. It was obvious to the physicians at the Royal Free Hospitals and in Newcastle-upon- Tyne that they were dealing with the consequences of an epidemic and endemic infectious disease. It was at this same epidemic period that Dr Wallis described the Cumberland Epidemic as Encephalomyelitis of Unknown Origin. It is difficult to imagine that these three physicians and their associates got the name wrong. They were dealing with an encephalomyelitis. What does this term signify? Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: is a simple term that translates into English in the following manner: • • My = muscle Algic = pain • • • Encephalo = brain Mye = spinal cord Itis = inflammation Myelitis: In part the name myelitis was a logical association with the illness poliomyelitis that in 1955 was being tamed by the Jonah Salk Poliomyelitis Immunization. Criticism of the name, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: The critics of this term have had no problem with the Myalgic part referring to muscle pain. The reason why these physicians were so sure that they were dealing with an inflammatory illness of the brain is that they examined patients in both epidemic and endemic situations with this curious diffuse brain injury. In the epidemic situation with patients falling acutely ill and in some cases dying, autopsies were performed and the diffuse inflammatory brain changes are on record. Inflammation is often associated with increased sedimentation rate, fever, inflammatory blood cells but these are not usually seen in paralytic poliomyelitis and yet no one doubts that this is in part an inflammation of the capillaries supplying the anterior horn cells. Circa 1996, an autopsy was performed on a woman with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis in Newcastle-upon- Tyne by Dr John Richardson and the brain tissue examined by Dr. James Mobray at St Mary's Paddington. This woman had a history of typical Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, was well known by Dr Richardson and accidentally died when her car fell off the side of the pier into the North Atlantic, the cold water preserving the brain tissue. Dr Mowbray was able to demonstrate an autoimmune inflammatory injury at the capillary level of the brain and basement membrane, the area that separates the capillaries from the neurons and brain tissue. In effect the same juxtaposition as in poliomyelitis but in this case in the brain and not in the spinal cord. (Poliovirus also injures the sub cortical areas of the brain.) Recently an M.E. patient's spine has been examined in the UK and the inflammatory nature was also discovered. Myalgic Encephalitis is a diffuse inflammatory injury of the capillaries at the level of the basement membrane of the brain. It makes no sense to rename the horse and call it Myalgic Encephalopathy. All brain pathologies involving brain tissue are encephalopathies. Let us stop fussing around and get back to the real problem and that is investigating the patients, segregating them into sub-type injuries and working on the treatment of these children and adults. Were these epidemics that I have spoken about cases of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis? They were. I have personally visited all of these cases except for the Cumberland epidemic and Wallis left us such a good description of that epidemic that there can be no doubt. I have personally gone to Los Angeles and examined patients from the Los Angeles epidemic. I have gone to Iceland and examined patients from the Akureyri epidemic. I have examined patients from the Royal Free Hospital epidemics, from the Newcastle sporadic illnesses. Many are the same or similar and many of them had been rejected or shunned because they were not true poliomyelitis. However they were all cases of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. So what did we know about M.E. by 1958? Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.) could be categorized as follows: 1. M.E. follows a contagious epidemic and endemic infectious disease, 2. M.E. represented a diffuse Central Nervous and in some cases a Peripheral Nervous System Injury in which different organs and different systems were also sometimes involved. 3. M.E. is an illness that follows an infection, probably viral in nature, but different epidemics appear to have been the result of different neurotropic diseases. Some were definitely ECHO and some were other enteroviruses but most were never categorized. (When we studied 100 cases, 40 acute onset and 60 gradual onset cases we found no suggestion of enteroviruses in the gradual onset and only 10 of the 40 acute onset cases were recoverable enteroviruses. Two of the 10 were post-transfusion and 8 of the acute onset were post infectious.) The cause in 90 % of the cases remained a mystery. 4. The incubation period from time of contact with the infection until the appearance of the illness is approximately 4-7 days, 5. In its epidemic form M.E. was most commonly seen in (a) Health Care Workers, (b) children and older students in residential schools, nurses residences and hospitals, (c) in military barracks where students or soldiers were housed in close proximity further supporting the belief in its infectious nature. 6. Although M.E. was not caused by poliovirus in the Akureyri epidemic, infection with M.E. somehow protected the patients from the polio epidemic that swept though Iceland in the 1950s. Polioviruses represent three of approximately 100 different enteroviruses. This was the reason why many in the UK believed that some of these epidemics were probably caused by a less lethal non-polio form of enteroviruses such as ECHO, Coxsackie, the numbered and new enteroviruses. ---------------------- ---------------------- THE CENTRE FOR DISEASE CONTROL DEFINITION OF CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME (CFS) Do not for one minute believe that CFS is simply another name for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.). It is not. Though CFS is based upon a typical M.E. epidemic, in my opinion it has always been a confused and distorted view of reality. The invention of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has to be one of the most curious cases of inventive American scientific imperialism that one could imagine. Children and Students Many of the M.E. epidemics started out among children or students. This occurred in 1936 Fond du Lac epidemic, the 1946 to 1949 Akureyri epidemics, the 1950 St Joseph Infirmary epidemic, the 1952 Middlesex epidemic, the 1955 Cumbria epidemic, the 1955 Addington and Durban epidemics, the 1970-1971 Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital. It was not then surprising that the Incline Village epidemic should also start among students. The Lake Tahoe Epidemic The Lake Tahoe epidemic that started in August 1984 also started amongst students. In this case the epidemic began in a high school girls' basketball team that was travelling in a bus to play various other teams. The epidemic spread rapidly with an incubation period of approximately a week. As in many of the other epidemics, it then spread to the general community. After the epidemic started it then involved three high schools, both students and teachers and ultimately spread to the community. For some reason it was considered to be an epidemic of infectious mononucleosis. This is an illness caused by a virus Epstein Barr Syndrome. Associating the Lake Tahoe epidemic with Epstein Barr Syndrome was frankly ridiculous and you will see why almost immediately. Dr Paul Cheney and Dr Daniel Peterson were inundated by the number of rapidly developing cases of seriously ill patients and called the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta for back up. First International Symposium on Immunology and Pathogenesis of Persistent Virus Infections Fast-forward to April 1987 and the First International Symposium on Immunology and Pathogenesis of Persistent Virus Infections held in Atlanta Georgia. This was a symposium hosted by the CDC and Dr Carlos Lopez. At this meeting Dr Gary Holmes gave out his new paper, "A cluster of patients with a chronic mononucleosis-like syndrome," that had just been published in JAMA. (See Holmes, Kaplan, Stewart et al: JAMA 1987:287:2297-2302) The publication essentially stated that Epstein Barr Virus was not the apparent cause of this illness in the 130 patients from which they took blood samples. But they weren't sure and suggested that further study be done. Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) Now anyone who realizes that infectious mononucleosis is caused by the herpes family virus, Epstein Barr Virus (EBV), and that the incubation period of this illness is approximately 40 days, should have realized that you simply cannot have a rapidly spreading viral epidemic with a virus with a latent period of 40 days. Neither Dr Straus nor Dr Holmes, senior government physicians, should have fallen into such a trap. They only had to go to the excellent CDC library to realize that rather than spending half a million dollars or so on a publication that they should have known would not have incriminated EBV. Yet this epidemic somehow spread the myth that this illness was caused by EBV. Today, as I write this short history of M.E. and CFS the vast majority of physicians and the public still associate Epstein Barr Virus with CFS. Such is the perseverance of error. Human Herpes Virus 6 (HHV6) This virus was not associated with CFS until after the 1990 period. HHV6 is the virus that causes the benign childhood illness, Roseola. By 1986 HHV6 was already known to have an incubation period of 9 days due to human experimentation when the actual virus was injected into several children. See (Gorbac, Second Edition, Infectious Diseases, page 1335). When acquired by random infection, the incubation period of HHV6 Roseola was more like 12 days. So once again anyone with access to a library or a computer would have soon dispelled any view that HHV6 was a cause of M.E./CFS epidemics where the incubation was approximately 7 days or less. Is it possible that Steven Strauss and the other intelligentsia of the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Bethesda and CDC in Atlanta and elsewhere didn't have access to libraries and the Internet? Maybe we should start a public request to ask for donations for them. What did we know about M.E. in 1984 after the Lake Tahoe epidemic? • The CDC investigators and the physicians of Lake Tahoe were dealing with a rapidly spreading infectious disease with a short one week or less incubation period. Obviously this was consistent with the epidemics of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis already documented in this brief history. • Like the several epidemics noted that started with children or students, so did this. • Like the patients in all of the epidemics discussed, the effects of the infection involved the Central Nervous System but unlike a stroke caused by an embolism, or malignancy, or arterial obstruction, the CNS involvement that occurred in these patients were not focal but consistent with a diffuse CNS injury. • In the Lake Tahoe epidemic as in the previous epidemics described, the type of Central Nervous System involvement was obviously of a more diffuse nature and the type of peripheral involvement that caused so many troubling symptoms in all these epidemics was consistent with a very low grade vasculitis (See Mercy San Juan Hospital Epidemic) or in many cases a classical radiculopathy (spinal nerve root involvement) or even a very low grade Guillam Barre Syndrome as was described by Alberto Marinacci when he examined the Las Angeles County Hospital patients. (See Dr Marinacci's book Applied Electromyography. Lea & Febiger, 1968: Chapter 9). However, I should note that the mere mention of Guillam Barre Syndrome drives many neurologists crazy. They say that GB Syndrome is a severe disease that if not treated effectively may kill or leave the patient permanently disabled. However, all real diseases have a wide variety of penetration from so mild that they may be missed to, in some diseases, having potentially mortal consequences. If we consider the Lake Tahoe epidemic alone we have the primary definitional determinant of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. The Lake Tahoe Epidemic represented an illness a. With an acute onset, b. With an incubation period of 4-7 days c. Occurring in both students and adults, d. Involving the central nervous system in a diffuse, non focal manner, e. The onset of a Raynaud's disease with a peripheral coldness, blanching and pain syndrome of fingers, hands and feet or significant postural hypotension or instability. A non-traumatic, acute onset of these two syndromes is consistent with an injury or a significant diffuse change in the autonomic physiology of the sub cortical brain. f. rapidly developing flaccid muscle weakness with minimal effort or activity, (The Lake Tahoe epidemic was initially called Raggedy Anne Syndrome due to this finding.) g. There were two illnesses, an acute viral like illness and a secondary persisting illnesses that in the more severe cases left permanent persisting sequelae h. With peripheral pain symptoms that have variable features resembling in some cases, a radiculopathy, is some cases a vasculitis, and even a very low grade Guillam Barre Syndrome, Although the final terminology of conclusion "h" is subject to debate, are features "a to g" a very difficult set of conclusions to come to? I don't thinks so. There is a consistent similarity of the Lake Tahoe epidemic patients to all of the previous epidemics mentioned in this short history and the many others that are documented in our textbook, The Clinical and Scientific Basis of Mvalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Yet retain these above Lake Tahoe features in mind when we come to the first CDC definition that was largely based upon this very same Lake Tahoe epidemic illness. Major Problems of the 1988 CDC definition It is my opinion that the CDC 1988 definition of CFS describes a non-existing chimera based upon inexperienced individuals who lack any historical knowledge of this disease process. The CDC definition is not a disease process. It is (a) a partial mix of infectious mononucleosis /glandular fever, (b) a mix of some of the least important aspects of M.E. and (c) what amounts to a possibly unintended psychiatric slant to an epidemic and endemic disease process of major importance. Let us try to decipher this definition. 1. The principal author: Dr Gary Holmes is one of those men who it is difficult not to like. From my limited knowledge of Dr Holmes it is my opinion that he is well organized, brilliant, a kind man and the sort of person any university would want to have on staff. To my knowledge he never continued to show any interest in this disease process and Pub Med and Google search fail to reveal any subsequent scientific papers concerning M.E. or CFS. 2. The other authors: So curious was the 1988 CDC definition that if you review the authors, you will find that the majority had never published on M.E. or CFS either before or after this definitional publication and the majority had never ever to my knowledge ever before or since examined or investigated any serious number of CFS patients. In fact, I would estimate that the majority had never actually examined and investigated as single M.E. patient. 3. The curious name: The authors named the disease Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Fatigue is a totally indefinable concept. Fatigue is impossible to measure or quantify. Fatigue is so non-specific that it can be a common element in any acute or chronic disease and many psychiatric diseases. Worse, it redirects the medical and public attention to the totally indefinable fatigue and away from the obvious Central Nervous System changes in these patients. Much worse, it makes fun of a serious illness since most people and most physicians tend to equate fatigue with laziness, work avoidance, something that a bit of effort will chase away. It has turned out to be a damning indictment to all M.E. patients. 4. The first Major Criteria: This 1988 CDC definition contains (a) two major criteria, (b) 11 Minor Criteria, (c) three physical criteria. Let us start with the first major criteria: "A new onset of persistent or relapsing, debilitating fatigue or easy fatigability in a person who has no previous history of similar symptoms, that does not resolve with bed rest, and is severe enough to reduce or impair average daily activity below 50% of the patients premorbid activity level for a period of at least 6 months." This major criterion does not clearly distinguish between acute or gradual onset diseases. In all M.E. epidemic or endemic patients the patients represent acute onset illnesses. The fatigue criteria listed here can be found in hundreds of chronic illnesses and clearly defines nothing. 5. The second Major Criteria: This makes the illness CFS a disease of exclusion. The definitional statement is: "Exclude all other disease processes. " Any disease process that has major criteria, of excluding all other disease processes, is simply not a disease at all; it doesn't exist. In effect, by either the first or second major criteria this is nor a measurable illness and a disease that is not measurable or testable simply does not exist. What did Dr Holmes and his colleagues miss? They missed the fact that M.E. is (a) an acute onset illness, (b) the fact that M.E. is a measurable diffuse brain injury, (c) in a complete form. M.E. has a dual inception, an infectious illness followed by the diffuse neurological aspects of this disease. 6. The Minor Criteria are consistent with M.E. but unfortunately for the greater part, are also consistent with Infectious Mononucleosis that I believe the authors of these diagnostic criteria thought they were describing. 7. The Three Physical Criteria of the CDC 1988 Definition: These findings are totally related to infectious mononucleosis and not to the normal or average Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. The criteria fail to distinguish the biphasic nature of M.E. as mentioned before, the initial infectious illness that often resembles the minor infection that heralds another biphasic disease, paralytical poliomyelitis. The infectious disease process varies but is usually minor and after three or four days is usually unverifiable so that any researcher who quotes the patient as having the three physical criteria when he or she examines the patient probably at the very least can be accused of being very imaginative. First it is not possible to examine any patient in the first days of illness unless it is an epidemic situation. In several chronic thousand patients I have examined the three physical criteria simply do not exist in more than 1 % of the patients examined. What are the CDC Physical Criteria? a. Low-grade fever with an oral temperature between 37.6 and 38.6 centigrade, b. Non-exudative pharyngitis (without any pus or discharge), c. Palpable or tender anterior or posterior cervical or axillary lymph nodes less than 2 cm in diameter. In the chronic patients the temperature tends to be normal or subnormal. Most chronic patients have no pharyngitis, they may have a dry pharynx, they may have an injected pharyngeal area around the tonsilar pillars, (Anne Mildon effect) but generally they don't have a classical pharyngitis as seen in any acute infectious disease. As to the palpable lymph nodes, all healthy patients well or otherwise unless they are severely obese have palpable lymph nodes. Since many M.E. patients have hypersensitive skin or fibromyalgia of course they have tenderness. But painful lymph nodes scarcely are different from what is found in any acute upper respiratory track infection. If you are going to list physical findings then you have to first specify whether this is in the first few days of the illness or in the chronic phase and as mentioned almost no physician will ever see acute onset illness unless in an epidemic. In other words these physical criteria are at best of no diagnostic importance and in general, useless. 8. The Insurance Company - psychological bias: the direction given in the name Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has opened the door for insurance companies to invent and support a pseudo-psychological treatment of physical and cognitive therapy that in my view has been used to push the patients so far that they then quit the program and this allows the insurance company to define the disabled patient as non-compliant and allows the insurance company to stop insurance payments. Since many if not most insurance policies also cut the patient off after two years of disability, this psychological interpretation has been destructive to the many patients disabled by M.E. 9. The pharmaceutical companies bias: These companies have also jumped into the door opened by this name of chronic fatigue - depression association in recommending a non-stop series of "new and better" anti-depressive medications that not only have added little if anything to the patients recovery but in many cases have caused suicides and even greater fatigue. Since many of these medications have a side effect of causing obesity, the patient's self worth is often further deteriorated. THE UK DEFINITIONS AND THE LURE OF AMERICAN GOLD Starting well prior to 1988 a deepening crisis loomed in both US and North American Research funding, in fact, there was no place in the world where there was sufficient funds to support the scientific community who did not work for commercial interests. With the publication of the 1988 CFS definition, NIH made it public that there was going to be millions' of dollars distributed to worthy scientists and clinicians who wished to investigate CFS, not just in North America but also in the world. Generally speaking it was not true, of course, and, as mentioned earlier, most of the first 38 million dollars went to existing projects on alcoholism, herpes virus research and other projects that had nothing to do with M.E. or CFS. Nightingale was able to document this in 1992 but later it became a generally openly published scandal. Of course the financially starved UK physicians and researchers did not know the history of the NIH funding. From the early 1900s or even earlier, access to American Government Research medical funding was highly concentrated in the north east states and for all purposes didn't even approach the mid west and western states. If there were funding exceptions to this general rule, these were funds that went to researchers who had done their training at Harvard or the other blue blood eastern Universities and at CDC. Never the less, the British trout jumped at the bait and organized what was published as the Oxford Guidelines in February 1991. There were some good very good clinicians and researchers on this definitional committee. Of the 21 researchers and clinicians who attended, the meeting was chaired by Professor Anthony Clare, a psychiatrist to constitute a total of 8 psychiatrists or individuals working in the field of psychology all who reputedly had studied patients with CFS. The composition of this definitional meeting was a commercially rational decision. Psychiatrists don't require expensive labs with expensive technology and they don't have to examine patients or cause the Government any expense in doing expensive "useless tests". A diagnosis of hysteria, psychosis, neurosis can be made as fast as it takes to open one's mouth and what is even better, there if there is no test to prove a psychiatric diagnosis correct, there is no test to prove them wrong either. Perhaps, it is for this reason that psychiatrists are used so frequently by the insurance industry to deprive the individual disabled M.E./ CFS patient from their disability pension. Let us to a quick accounting of the distribution of specialists in this committee: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Psychiatrists or psychologists: 38 % Infectious Disease: 4 persons or 19 % Biochemist: 2 persons or 10 % Internal Medicine: 5% Pharmaceutical Corporation: 5% Immunopathologic: 1 person or 5% MRI Specialist: 1 person or 5% GP: I person or 5% Neurologist: I person of 5% There was no nuclear medicine specialist in either SPECT or PET, nor were there any QEEG specialists, all who can map diffuse CNS injuries. Since it would appear that we are definitely dealing with a disease that injures the immune system it is curious that only one person in this field was invited. We find a lot of secondary endocrine dysfunction or injury in M.E. patients and there was no endocrinologist. However, what is really criminal about the Oxford Definition is the composition of the committee and the presence of this overwhelming psychiatric lobby. In effect the Oxford definitions are not only bad since they are in effect a copy and a variation of the CDC definition and the authors in general do not appear to understand the definitions of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis but in addition they are onerous because they further lead the way with the psychiatric-sation of physical medicine in general and the psychiatrization of M.E. in particular or the technical confusion implicit in the CDC diagnostic criteria. Psychiatrists are essential in modem medicine and in the evaluation and treatment of psychiatrically ill patients but psychiatrists have no primary role in the medical evaluation of physically injured patients: they only have place in the obscuring of the complex medical problems of M.E. patients. I believe that no psychiatrist has ever cured an M.E. patient using psychiatric treatments and what we are looking for in a patient is diagnostic understanding and a cure where and when that is possible. Diagnostic understanding will only come with the scientific investigation of patients and the scientific treatment when and if these treatments are possible. Essentially, like any subspecialty, M.E. is not a place for part time workers except in consultation but a discipline that requires physicians who are totally dedicated full time to the understanding of these patients, as are the specialists in any area of medicine. You may believe that I am negative about the views of psychiatry. In part this is true. When in my practice I see Canadian psychiatrists putting in writing that an M.E. patient has no psychiatric illness when the patient has a disability pension that pays the psychiatrically ill patients it makes me question where psychiatry is going. When the same psychiatrists then say that another M.E. patient has psychiatric disease when the insurance policy states that they don't pay pensions for psychiatric disease I know where psychiatry is gone. They have become the handmaids of commercial interests not of medicine. One grows sceptical of the bad faith of psychiatry. Psychiatric treatment is very useful and essential for psychiatric patients. Primary M.E. patients are simply not psychiatric patients. Unfortunately, it is not only psychiatrist physicians that have made themselves the tools of insurance companies. Good medicine, all comes down to carefully examining the patient, by careful history, careful physical and careful scientific investigation to the best of our abilities. Only by considering the individual and finding out what exactly is making them ill and understanding the complexities of their illnesses is going to solve the M.E. problem. Medicine is not about twisting the facts to support some addled psychiatric theory. Essentially, if you cannot first prove a disease by careful examination and scientific reproducible testing and upon this search for adequate treatments, if we cannot do this English physicians essentially are simply sending all chronically ill Britons and British medicine back into the dark ages. What we really require to investigate M.E. type disease is a battery of neuro-physiologists with another group of physicians to do a total body and illness mapping of the patient. We certainly require a better association of treatment investigation funded by governments and not only by the pharmaceutical industry. We know a lot about some of the components of M.E. that should be treatable such as the vascular destabilization of many M.E. patients. However, I am not aware of anyone working on this aspect of the disease process. None of these physicians were present, 'nor was the will, nor was the means to develop such a program. Once again, this definition or two definitions were really a dead end. Essentially, for some of the attendants, I believe that the Oxford Definition was part of belief structure, that it would aid those physicians to obtain US funds for research when research funds in the UK was rapidly drying up. If that was the case, it didn't succeed. Much of the US funds for CFS research was a myth. The UK was left with a definition that few if any have ever used. CDC's 1992 DEFINITION OF CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME The CDC website defines this CFS definition as: This case definition was authored by a group of international CFS experts, convened by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) in 1994, to update and refine an earlier (1988) case definition. Its purpose was to provide standard criteria for researchers who were investigating the illness. How truthful is this statement? Were the 16 CFS experts actually CFS experts? It does not appear so. Let us start there. Only three of the 16 authors of the 1992 CDC definition is well known in the M.E./CFS world and of those three, one was a NIH bureaucrat. In the 1992 CDC definition the two principal authors were Keiji Fukuda, M.D., M.P.H and Dr Stephen E. Straus. Dr Fukuda, the primary author was a very learned expert in Hansen's disease (Leprosy) not CFS and had never to my knowledge ever previously examined or investigated a single M.E./CFS patient. ------------------Like the ghosts on the 1988 definition, Fukuda disappeared in CFS obscurity. Nobody has ever used this mammoth definition of CFS. It was totally unusable. It removed patients as being ill with CFS with multiple disease conditions associated with M.E. It took the psychiatric approach of not permitting the intensive investigation of patients who essentially had an unknown complex disease process. The definition failed to address the findings that we already knew from the Lake Tahoe epidemic mentioned in this history or in any of the previous epidemics. This definition was a waste of good money. The second author was Dr. Stephen E. Straus, M.D. He was essentially a NIH bureaucrat physician who I believe, was largely responsible in distributing funds for M.E/ CFS research. The next two on the masthead were psychiatrists. If in the first CDC definition, it was unclear where the misinformed authors were taking this definition, i.e. to the world of medicine or to the world of psychiatry, then like in the Oxford definitions, we have no doubts as to the direction of this 1992 CDC definition. In fact it was increasingly obvious where the definitional direction was going in a psychiatric direction. In fact, the only disease you don't have to test for is a clear-cut psychiatric disease that is if you are also totally sure that the patient doesn't have any other major illness. Dr Ian Hickie, a learned and charming Australian psychiatrist was the third on the masthead of this definition. I had dinner with him in Australia and he was quite convinced that CFS was essentially a psychiatric disease. He was very well liked by his Australian colleagues but he did not seem to know or be interested in the investigation of physiological CNS dysfunction. I have met him at a conference but don't really know Dr Michael C. Sharpe, M.R.C.P., M.R.C. Psych.; He is also an Oxford psychiatrist like Beard and McEvedy and fourth on the masthead. I assume like Dr Hickie, he believed that CFS was a psychiatric disease. Dr James G. Dobbins, Ph.D. the fifth on the masthead as far as I am concerned, is a learned and brilliant medical bureaucrat associated with CDC Atlanta. Although he has his name on many CFS publications I do not know his views and he is not a physician. Of all of the authors on the masthead of the 1992 definition, to my knowledge, only Anthony L. Komaroff, M.D., F.A.C.P of Harvard has spent any ongoing serious time examining and testing CFS patients. He is a learned and brilliant researcher and clinician and medical historian and to the best of my knowledge was the only person listed as principal author who was truly knowledgeable concerning M.E. and any understanding that gave rise to the 1988 CDC definition of CFS. It is understandable that their laborious and endless definition, to my knowledge, has never actually been used except in lip service for researchers attempting to obtain grants from the NIH. THE 2003 CANADIAN M.E. AND CFS DEFINITION I will not discuss this definition in any detail since one of the authors will be doing so. Let me say, that this is the first definition constructed by specialists who have spent collectively over 100 years studying M.E. and CFS. It is the first definition and introduction of M.E. and CFS that makes a bit of sense, but like I in the first years of study, I confused M.E. and CFS as being the same. As I have explained, they are not. However, until a better set of definitions is constructed, we should go with the so-called Canadian definition. In effect, the Canadian definition represents some of the best, the most experienced and the most learned of the North American physicians who have studied M.E. and CFS. It is also the first major definition to bring back the term Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. THE FUTURE OF M.E. AND CFS DEFINITIONS I believe that M.E. and CFS should be separated as definitions. They are not the same. I would like to propose that M.E. be defined simply as being consistent with the majority of the ten following diagnostic features: Myalgic Encephalomyelitis is: 1. A variable and biphasic acute onset disease, 2. Primary Infection Phase: The first phase is an epidemic or endemic infectious disease generally with an incubation period of 4 to 7 days, where in most, but not all cases, an infection is evident. 3. Chronic Phase: The second and chronic phase follows closely on the first phase, usually within two to seven days, and is characterized by a measurable diffuse change in the function of the CNS. This is the persisting disease that most characterizes M.E. and is demonstrated by the following: 4. Testable Brain Changes: This second phase becomes chronic and is characterized by various measurable and clinical dysfunctions of the cortical or cortical and sub cortical brain. If the patient's illness is not persistently measurable using SPECT, PET or QEEG and / or Neuropsychological changes then it is not M.E. These changes can be roughly characterized as to severity: a. Type 1: where one side of the cortex is involved. These patients have the best chance of spontaneous recovery. b. Type 2: where both sides of the cortex are involved: These patients have the least chance of spontaneous recovery. c. Type 3: where both sides of the cortex, and either one or all of the posterior chamber organs, the Pons and Cerebellum, the sub cortical and brain stem structures are involved. Type 3 are the most severely affected patients and the most likely to be progressive or she little or no improvement with time. 5. Pain Syndromes: The pain syndromes. associated with the acute and chronic phases of M.E. may include (a) severe headaches of a type never previously experienced, (b) often associated with neck rigidity and occipital pain, (c) retro-orbital eye pain, (d) migratory muscle and arthralgia pain, (e) cutaneous hypersensitivity and (f) fibromyalgia type pain. These pain syndromes tend to decrease over time. 6. Neuropsychological Changes: There are neuropsychological changes that are measurable and demonstrate short-term memory loss, cognitive dysfunctions, increased irritability, confusion, and perceptual difficulties. There is usually rapid decrease in these functions after any physical or mental activity. This feature may improve over a period of years in patients with adequate financial and social support. 7. Major Sleep Dysfunction: including all forms of sleep dysfunction and day time alertness and sleep reversals. 8. Muscle Dysfunction: This feature may be due to vascular dysfunction or peripheral nervous or spinal dysfunction and includes both pain and rapid loss of strength of muscle function after moderate physical or mental activity. This feature tends to improve over years. 9. Vascular Dysfunction: This is the most obvious dysfunction when looked for and probably is the cause behind a significant number of the above complaints. Vascular change is most evident in patients with: a. POTS: severe postural hypotension. b. Cardiac irregularity: on minor positional changes or after minor physical activity, including inability for the heart to increase or decrease in speed and pump volume in response to increase or decrease in physical activity. c. Raynaud's Disease: vasoconstriction, blanching, coldness and pain of extremities d. Bowel Dysfunction: vascular dysfunction may be the single most causal basis behind bowel dysfunction when it occurs. 10. Endocrine Dysfunction: This feature is common and tends to be a late appearance and is most obvious in the: a. Pituitary-thyroid axis: This is common. Changes in serum TSH, FTI, FT4, Microsomal Ab., PTH, Calcium and phosphorus rarely occur until one or more years after illness onset and usually only after several years. This can be followed by ultrasound of the thyroid gland where a steady shrinking of the thyroid gland occurs with or without the development of non-serum positive Hashimoto's thyroiditis (a seeming contradiction of terms) and a significant increase in thyroid malignancy. Serum positive changes occur only after years. b. Pituitary-adrenal axis changes: this finding is infrequent. c. Pituitary-ovarian axis changes: d. Pituitary- (adrenal?)-Bladder dysfunction: occurs frequently in the early disease in some people. It is unknown if the cause is due to this link. SUGGESTED DIAGNOSIS OF CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME I would like to suggest the following radical new definition of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome but first I would like to give my reasons for this concept. Argument rationale: Increasingly over the past 60 years there has been a migration of rural inhabitants to the city. In 1945, approximately 60% of all people lived in the country or in small villages and towns. Town physicians were often well paid. In the post WWII period there has been a severe shift of populations in both the UK and in North America to large urban centres. In the United States there has' also been a shift of central urban white populations to the suburbs or peripheral areas of cities but these populations still are anchored to the urban centres by the automobile. During this population shift various forms of state medicine and insurance medicine has become part of every day medical life. During this same period, particularly during the past 35 years most physicians real after tax salaries have plummeted. This loss of real income of physicians may have fallen as much as 50% to 70% of the original income buying power. Physicians moved to the population centres. To compensate for the rapidly falling real income, physicians, at least in North America, have increased the number of patients that they see in any given hour. Instead of the examining room there are now a string of examining rooms where the physician runs between the cells, dispenses shoot from the hip diagnosis and rapid dispensing of pharmaceuticals that the industry suggest are the latest miracle. Careful history taking, examination and diagnosis have become too expensive for the average physician to maintain a superior income. In this drive to maintain income levels it has become simply too costly for the physician to deal with complex medical issues where the patient cannot be gotten out of the physician's presence in less than 7-8 minutes, usually less. Due to this financial fact of life, several changes have occurred: a. Physicians do not want to see sick people, only routine healthy people can be got in and out of the office efficiently in the allotted time. b. Physicians above all do not want to see patients with complex problems and complex illnesses. c. To assist this process of, time is money, physicians prescribe more pharmaceuticals many of which have adverse side effects that can make the ill patient even worse and over time, this has lead to the patient seeking alternative medicine answers, many of which are even more dangerous than the physician quick diagnosis and even quicker pharmaceutical treatment. d. Diagnostic medical technology, particularly during the past 15 years has increased in excellence and has outstripped government willingness to pay for it. Accordingly, technology in North America and the UK has become increasingly accessible only to the relatively wealthy citizens. e. Also, physicians are increasingly avoiding many technologies simply due to the fact that it may take up to an hour to write out a detailed description of the patient's illness for the technical expert performing the test. Also it takes time for the physician to understand these tests and discuss them with the technical experts until the diagnostic physicians have built up their own diagnostic abilities. Due to financial considerations, this is simply not being done. Physicians are avoiding these powerful technologies. f. Diagnostic technology for an increasing number of physicians means writing a few blood or urine tests. These are fast and cheap but rarely effective in uncovering complex medical illnesses. g. Most university medical schools have also failed the public in that they teach the 1890 Oslerian view of medicine, an excellent aspect of medicine in its time and still the only way to go in acute onset single entity illness. This consisted of reducing all medical problems to acute illnesses or single organ or single system injuries or pathologies. Osler essentially stated find the unit cause of the illness, treat it and you have a chance of recovery. Simple as it may seem today, this was a radical new approach to diagnostic medicine. At a University Medical School level, the concept of Osler's still pervades. Chronic illness tends to be concerned with old people with multiple medical problems. In general the concept of young people with multiple factor illnesses simply does not appear on the busy learning schedule. h. These and other factors have given rise to the concept of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as much as the CDC itself. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome has become a convenient coat hanger for any patient who is fatigued. Most fatigued patients represent complex medical disease, missed major disease, chronic disease, or psychiatric disease, for which the physician simply has not time. Most physicians best deal with these patients by sending them to a psychiatrist. i. A good psychiatrist in Canada will take a good history and also examine the patient and decide that the patient is either physically ill or psychiatrically ill. If this patient is considered physically ill, they often end up in limbo between physicians since few physicians wish to take the time to examine these patients properly. j. What I am talking about is the general failure of much of modem medicine to act using the age-old medical principals of (a) careful history, (b) detailed physical examination and (c) appropriate investigation. NEW, CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA The patient has: 1. A gradual onset fatigue syndrome, 2. This is usually due to a missed major disease in which common things are common: i.e. the patient has: a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. k. l. m. n. Missed cardiac disease, Missed malignancy, Missed vascular disease, Missed brain lesion either of a vascular or space occupying lesion, e. Missed test positive rheumatologic disease, Missed test negative rheumatologic disease, Missed endocrine disease, Missed physiological disease, Missed genetic disease, Missed chronic infectious disease, Missed pharmacological or immunization induced disease, Missed social disease, Missed drug use disease or habituation, Missed dietary dysfunction diseases, Missed psychiatric disease. You will notice that 1. My diagnostic criteria for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis are little changed from the older experts diagnostic criteria for M.E. discussed briefly in this discussion paper and in more detail in our book The Clinical and Scientific Basis of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. 2. My diagnostic criteria restore Myalgic Encephalomyelitis to a CNS disease entity, stripping it away from the CDC Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Diagnosis collage of disease entities. 3. My diagnostic criteria for M.E. firmly note it as an acute onset disease and add technological diagnostic techniques to its understanding. 4. My diagnostic criteria for CFS are vastly different from all previous CDC diagnostic criteria including the new Canadian diagnostic criteria and place it where most physicians leave it, as a gradual onset missed major diagnosis. 5. Both diagnostic criteria take up less than a page, something that a modem physician will actually read and possibly act upon. This material will be available on the Nightingale's new website http://www.nightingale.ca in September 2006 or earlier.
© Copyright 2018

domain: medical


text:
Okay I thought this guy was like 20 or 21 but I just found out he’s like 25 and I’m like “abort abort abort I can’t do this my life isn’t there yet”
Which is a dumb response bc he literally has a girlfriend and has given no indication of being into me. Like what do I even think I’m aborting. My daydreams? C’mon Allie. Get it together.
Turns out he IS into me, and my brain was immediately like “you know what YES MY LIFE IS THERE.”

domain: psychology


text:
Our duplex apartment is centrally located on Main St. in the middle of downtown Northampton. It's steps away from every restaurant, nightclub, museum, gallery, theater and Smith College. Put your car away and spend your day exploring our beautiful little city. You'll be staying in a sunny, spacious, private bedroom, with high ceilings, and windows facing Main St. Downstairs is a huge, airy kitchen, dining and living room. Central Heat, A/C, & even a W/D. And of course Wifi.
Northampton, Massachusetts, USA
Ting, du skal huske
- Ikke egnet til babyer (under 2 år)
- Rygning forbudt
- Ingen kæledyr
- Ingen fester eller begivenheder

domain: travel


text:
Last year Ohio removed so-called pit bulls from its dangerous dog definition via HB 14. As such, it is astounding that some Ohio communities — like Swanton and Reynoldsburg — refuse to repeal their breed-specific legislation (BSL) despite their utter failure to be able to enforce it. It’s no secret that BSL is ineffective and unenforceable, as even the White House now acknowledges, yet some communities still cling to the fiction that breed bans keep residents safe.
For instance, when pit bull advocates lobbied the Parma, Ohio City Council recently to have Parma’s circa 1987 pit bull ban repealed, Ward 4 Councilman Brian Day, chair of the councils Public Safety Committee, said,
Im not willing to take the risk of changing the ordinance, and then something happens to somebody, he said.
Ironically, the breed-specific legislation that Parma has clung to for 26 years is what has put the community at risk.
Why does BSL put communities at risk? Because as counties like Denver and Miami-Dade and cities like Winnipeg have shown, areas where BSL has been passed often see dog bite incidences greatly increase. Shouldn’t the chair of the Public Safety Committee be current on data like Denver’s and Miami-Dade’s, especially if he’s going to defend what all the rest of the country already knows is archaic, ineffective, and unconstitutional legislation?

domain: news


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Minors viewing explicit material causes those ideas to be normal for them, including dangerous ideas such as what could be seen in fifty shades of gray. No minor or adult needs that in their life. We need a moral up-right society not a bunch of sex obsessed creeps everywhere. Minors should be either working on their jobs, school, or just playing, not thinking about sex.
So minors can legally have sex (with someone who is not too old or too young). But looking at sexually explicit pictures is bad and so is using sex toys? So if the real deal is okay, why are just pictures and toys bad? It makes no sense to me.
It's human nature that they always will do what they are told not to. Especially teenager when they do not have enough knowledge of safe sex. They will do whatever they can to satisfy their curious mind. And make them responsible for this legally only make it worse. They already have to be responsible for their behavior (get pregnant or mental trauma...)
Kids that are using "adult" toys and viewing "adult" material aren't having actual sexual contact and spreading sexually transmissible diseases. Parents of minors that would wish to prevent their children from doing this could simply forbid them from doing so themselves; it's not the government's place to suppress this behavior. Additionally, establishments that provide such products are in this way a service to a community.
You'll get sex offenders who only purchased a barbie doll with torn clothes. This needs to become a clearer topic; what defines a sexually explicit toy or image? What would the consequences be?
Anyway, you'll never manage to monitor google images. People can use their parents computers, and many programs suggests searches that may cause said images to pop up. And what will happen with ads? We just don't know.

domain: sociology