Chronic Fatigue Advisory Committee Meeting

This week, the Chronic Fatigue Advisory Committee will meet, and listen to the findings of Dr. Daniel Peterson.  The advisory committee has representation from the FDA, CDC, NIH, HRSA, and Social Security Administration.  The event is essentially a make-or-break event - will the evidence be strong enough to persuade the various agencies to start paying more attention to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, that is the question that remains to be asked.

Over the years, the CDC has finally begun to realize that this disorder is reaching alarming proportions.  However, the system failed patients - the CDC essentially works hand in hand with the NIH - if the CDC doesn't believe something, the NIH does not grant research funds to institutions into that particular field of interest.  Precisely, this is what happened with the findings of Defreitas et. al years back - no research dollars flowed to anyone wanting to search for a virus responsible for CFIDS.  Without this, no drug companies are willing to invest in something that is unproven.

The current findings basically confirm earlier findings from research done be Dr. Elaine Defreitas.  This time, the difference is that Dr. DeFreitas did not actually isolate and characterize the virus, but found clues to its existence - this time we have a virus.  Hopefully, millions of dollars in research grants will flow to studying XMRV, rather than studying various neurological phenomena.