Teflon Woman

Posted by Cort Johnson With her smile and her ingratiating matter Dr. Hanna is the NIH’s Teflon woman for ME/CFS. As Dr. Reeves punches up his next dazzling 20 minute PowerPoint presentation Dr. Hanna throws her few tidbits into the mix and shuts up. It’s remarkable how little interest there has been in what is arguably the most important federal

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The Alpha Dog

Posted by Cort Johnson Tantalized by the opportunity to make a difference the ME/CFS community let loose on the CDC over the past year. To its credit the CDC’s review process allowed for that. Missing the Forest for the Tree – The CDC, however, is not the main game in town – they’re not the alpha dog we vitally need

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A CFS Chart on Every Doctor’s Wall

Posted by Cort Johnson Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) is complicated. That’s bad enough for patients but for many physicians it’s entirely too complicated – the last person they want to see walk thru their office door is a chronic fatigue syndrome patient. Given the lack of chronic fatigue syndrome specialists – that’s a big problem – there are no substitutes

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XMRV – the Potential For Change

Posted by Cort Johnson “A supernova (pl. supernovae) is a stellar explosion. Supernovae are extremely luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines an entire galaxy” This discovery has the potential for being a world changing event in every way for chronic fatigue syndrome patients.  If it really works out – still an if –  one almost

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XMRV – Puppet Master?

Posted by Cort Johnson The idea that  XMRV could be a kind of ‘puppet master’  (eg. Dr. Bell) that allows other infections such as EBV or HHV6 or Lyme or enterovirus to  become exacerbated is generating discussion.  Dr. Coffin suggested such in his article “A New Virus For Old Diseases”. Dr. Huber, a researcher studying endogenous viral elements in ME/CFS has

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XMRV/XAND Information Center

Posted by Cort Johnson The discovery of the XMRV retrovirus in most chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) patients appears to be a demarcating point in the history of this illness. The publication of the study in Science, the most prestigious scientific journal in the world, by a stellar cast of researchers from the National Cancer Institute, the Cleveland Clinic and the

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Game Changer

Posted by Cort Johnson “Hopefully this will finally make people change their attitudes to this disease.”       Dr. Judy Mikovits The news had been in the air for the last week; the Whittemore Peterson Institute was going to publish something big  – really big – on Friday.  Then early Thursday the news was out – a retrovirus had been

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Recovery, Relapse And Recovery (The Recovery/Recovering Stories #III)

Posted by Cort Johnson The Recovery/Recovering Stories – stories from ME/CFS patients who have experienced significant recoveries. The diversity of recovery stories indicates that ME/CFS is indeed a very heterogeneous disorder; any story may or may not apply to a given individual. Martha Kilcoyne detailed how she fully recovered from a severe case of chronic fatigue syndrome in ‘Defeat Chronic

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