Media Report on The Lyndonville CFS Cluster : The Wall Street Journal

I noticed today that there is a new article, and video, by The Wall Street Journal reporting on the Lyndonville New York cluster of CFS - one of around a dozen such clusters around the World. It's the best press I've seen in quite a while, and it was such a nice change from all the bad press that the PACE trial has given us, that I decided to post it here. :) I wish it would get picked up by the UK news channels, but I imagine I'll be disappointed there!!

The article, written by Amy Docker Marcus, is titled The Puzzle of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and reports on Dr Bell's (the GP for the area) efforts to research the possible role XMRV may have played in the cluster in his town. He has been treating people affected by the outbreak since the mid 1980's, and this seems to be the closest they've come to finding out what happened to cause such a cluster. Many of his original patients are still very ill, in a lot of pain, & often severely disabled decades after their initial symptoms began.

Dr Bell has had many of his patients from Lyndonville tested for XMRV, a recently discovered retrovirus which could possibly be part of the cause of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) / CFS, and has found that a high percentage of those tested are indeed infected with the retrovirus. I can only imagine both the hope and fear this has caused amongst his patients. Hope that finally something will be done, that a treatment may be found, or even just a single, validated test for the illness. Fear that this new retrovirus research will be repressed, like other such projects have been in the past.

You know, it strikes me as insane that a disease known for occurring in these types of clusters would be painted as psychological. In what universe does that even make sense?? Essentially what the psycho-social rabble are saying is that these clusters are caused by some kind of mass hysteria. What a load of rubbish!! There are hundreds of people in some of these clusters - it's completely realistic that every single one of them is putting it on, or is in some way mentally ill. So many clusters, across the whole world, many of them beginning at around the same time - that's something that immediately and obviously says there's a good possibility of the cause being an 'infectious agent' - viral or environmental, to any right minded person. It's a tragedy that the issue has been either ignored or maligned by doctors, researchers, and the media ever since the 80's!

Here's a copy of the WSJ Video report. :)

I'd love to hear your reply and I know it'll be valued by other readers too! I always try to respond, please just be aware that it can take me some time to find the energy to do so as I've been particularly ill recently and struggling to get online. Thanks for reading! :)

Media Report on The Lyndonville CFS Cluster : The Wall Street Journal

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