Mark Vink

Mark A. Vink, MD, is a General Practitioner and insurance doctor in The Netherlands. He lives with severe ME/CFS triggered by pneumonia and prolonged by Graded Exercise Therapy (GET). As a result of his adverse experience with GET, he has been a vocal critic of the PACE trial. One piece written about the PACE trial garnished him a nomination for the 2016 John Maddox Prize, an international award for an individual who promotes sound science despite difficulty or hostility in doing so.

While bedridden, he carried out a biomedical study on himself, collecting blood with finger prick lancets and pediatric sized tubes. By measuring creatine kinase, inorganic phosphate and lactic acid before and after trivial exercise (i.e., walking the 5 to 6 yards from his bed to the toilet and back), he showed that his aerobic energy production and lactic acid excretion were both impeded.

An open letter to Psychological Medicine about “recovery” and the PACE trial
Dr. Vink was one of the signatories of an open letter to Psychological Medicine about “recovery” and the PACE trial dated March 13, 2017 urging Psychological Medicine to retract a paper claiming recovery for ME/CFS patients by using Graded Exercise Therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy.

Notable studies

 * August 2107 - Internet-Based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Is Ineffective and May Impede Natural Recovery in Adolescents with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. A Review by Simin Ghatineh and Mark Vink "Abstract: The Dutch Fatigue In Teenagers on the interNET (FITNET) study claimed that after 6 months, internet based cognitive behaviour therapy in adolescents with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), led to a 63% recovery rate compared to 8% after usual care, and that this was maintained at long term follow up (LTFU). Our reanalysis shows that their post-hoc definition of recovery included the severely ill, the unblinded trial had no adequate control group and it used lax selection criteria as well as outcomes assessed via questionnaires rather than objective outcomes, further contributing to exaggerated recovery figures. Their decision not to publish the actometer results might suggest that these did not back their recovery claims. Despite these bias creating methodological faults, the trial still found no significant difference in recovery rates (“~60%”) at LTFU, the trial’s primary goal. This is similar to or worse than the documented 54–94% spontaneous recovery rates within 3–4 years, suggesting that both FITNET and usual care (consisting of cognitive behaviour and graded exercise therapies) are ineffective and might even impede natural recovery in adolescents with ME/CFS. This has implications for the upcoming costly NHS FITNET trial which is a blueprint of the Dutch study, exposing it to similar biases."
 * 2017 - Research Article - PACE trial authors continue to ignore their own null effect (OPEN ACCESS/FULL TEXT)
 * 2017 - Assessment of Individual PACE Trial Data: in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Cognitive Behavioral and Graded Exercise Therapy are Ineffective, Do Not Lead to Actual Recovery and Negative Outcomes may be Higher than Reported (OPEN ACCESS/FULL TEXT)
 * 2016 - The PACE Trial Invalidates the Use of Cognitive Behavioral and Graded Exercise Therapy in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Review (OPEN ACCESS/FULL TEXT)
 * 2015 - The Aerobic Energy Production and the Lactic Acid Excretion are both Impeded in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (OPEN ACCESS/FULL TEXT)

Talks and interviews

 * 3 Oct 2017 - Interview of Dr Mark in Volkskrant 'Als je CVS hebt is naar de wc gaan al een marathon'/ 'For patients with CFS, going to the bathroom is similar to running a marathon.'

Online presence

 * ResearchGate
 * Twitter
 * Google Scholar
 * LinkedIn

Learn more

 * Sep 25, 2015 - "How Walking to Bathroom Can Be Harder Than Running a Marathon: A Doctor’s ME/CFS Case Study" by Cort Johnson in Health Rising