At Wed, 30 Jul 2003, Dr. David Wiseman wrote:
>
>Dear All
>It seems that my requests to behave nicely on this board have gone
>unheeded. As soon as I am technically able I will be removing all the
>offending posts.
>For fear of repetition:
>1. DO NOT make accusations about anyone that you cannot support in a
>court of law.
>2. Even if you think you can make such accusations, this is not the
>place to do it. If you have a gripe against someone - approach them
>respectfully and directly. Do not use this board as a battle ground. If
>you think you have a valid criticism about anyone, document it
>carefully. Summarise the points you want to make (in one or two short
>sentences) and then back it up with complete documentation. Do not use
>inuendo. It does not stand up in a court of law. It will not stand up
>here. Review your case and ask yourself if you are really being to
>harsh on the person. Do you really have evidence to support your point?
>Give them the benefit of the doubt.
>3. DO NOT escalate tensions by responding on this message baord.
>Contrary to popular beleif - I do not spend 24 hours a day checking my
>email and message board postings. If you see something that looks odd -
>please tell either myself or Tracy Joslin (tracy.joslin@adhesions.org)
>by email and phone. I cannot guarnatee to remove posts immediately, but
>we will try.
>4. Avoid the temptation to conduct your war even in email. What you
>say will end up on a message baord somewhere, no doubt out of context.
>5. We ARE NOT AGAINST DR. Kruschinski. Please stop all allegations to
>the contrary. My post of a few weeks ago was fully endorsed by him. He
>has told me that some people misinterpreted that post. Again - HE FULLY
>ENDORSED THAT POST. We totally resent any accusation that the IAS has
>been behind any some smear camapaign. It is not true.
>6. We encourage Dr. K (and any other doctor doing this kind of work)
>to collect his data and to present them to the medical community. Both
>Dr. K and I fully expect that given the severity of the ARD disease,
>there will be patients in whom pain or other symptoms will recur after
>his, or anyone else's surgery.
>7. A message board is not the place to conduct serious medical
>research. A patient's perception about their problems is easily
>influenced by their expectations and their impressions. By continuing
>to post glowing reviews about Dr. K, or anyone use YOU ARE HARMING HIS
>CREDIBILITY.
>Let me spell this out. By inflating someone's expectations about their
>surgery with any doctor, you are going to make them more dissapointed if
>even the slightest thing goes wrong. Similarly, any posting of a
>problem may prompt a patient to believe that their minor problem may be
>similar. Consequently talk of "complications" can be blown out of
>proportion. Nonetheless - he has a section in his message board where
>he invites people to discuss their problems after surgery.
>The section is called:
>"Continuing pain after surgery
>Here you are welcome to discuss your problems after having surgery ... "
>
>I do not think this is a terribly good idea to have such a section, but
>if you are compelled to discuss problems that is the place to do it.
>
>I have discussed this frequently with Dr. K and have stressed that we
>want him to collect sound and credible data. Please help him to do this
>by respecting the rules of this board.
>
>8. Dr. K has shared with us (as well as posted on his own board)some
>preliminary results of his data. I STRESS preliminary becuase they are
>legitimately open to some interpretation IN EITHER DIRECTION.
>
>It seems that there have been some 33 US patients that have seen Dr. K
>in the last 11 months or so. Some of them must be excluded from the
>analysis for good reasons (eg patients have gallbladder or appendix
>operations etc) , leaving 27 patients for analysis. Of these 6 of them
>have reported some recurrence of pain or adhesions, which is 21%. THIS
>IS A VERY GOOD RESULT, but nonetheless a preliminary one. We will be
>happy to revise this estimate when there is full documentation from Dr.
>K.
>This compares very well with another study (that we will report to you
>shortly) in which a US doctor performed similar procedures (using
>Seprafilm and conventional laparoscopy) in 19 apparently similar
>patients with a 24% rate of return of symptoms.The follow up there was
>1-32 months.
>The jury is not yet in however becuase we need to see longer follow up
>for both studies, as well as data from Dr. K's European patients. We
>encourage him to collect these data. Please help him maintain its
>credibility by refraining from comment in either direction.
>
>9. Please note that both Beverly Doucette and Dawn Rose have resigned
>from the IAS, at their request. As soon as we are we will remove their
>names from the list of support contacts.
>
>Please let's return to the business of supporting patients in need of
>support.
>
>Thank you
>
>--
>David Wiseman
>
-- Let's be good to ourselves....Kristie