By David Tuller, Virology Blog
Note: This account draws from interviews, a close reading of a fraction of the 4608 studies that pop up (as of today; yesterday it was 4606) on a PubMed search for “chronic fatigue syndrome,” and a review of many pages of government documents–in particular the minutes and testimony from meetings of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Advisory Committee to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, one of many such panels established to provide guidance to federal health officials. Not much here will be a surprise to anyone who has read the better ME/CFS blogs, or Hillary Johnson’s authoritative and prodigiously researched 1996 account, Osler’s Web: Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic. I want to thank Professor Racaniello for letting me invade his space to post this very long story.
In the early 1990s, Mary Schweitzer, a history professor at Villanova University near Philadelphia, suffered through successive bouts of sickness—mononucleosis associated with Epstein-Barr virus, a stomach parasite, repeated episodes of bronchitis. One day, while reviewing student exams in her office, she slumped over and blacked out. Not long after, she received a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome.
In written testimony to a federal advisory committee a few years ago, Dr. Schweitzer described how disabled she eventually became: “On a bad day, I would never get up at all, or would lie in bed curled up under the covers…I experienced pain behind my eyes and in the back of my neck. It felt as if somebody had hit me in the back of the head with a baseball bat, and someone else was trying to unscrew my eyeballs with a pair of pliers.”
Over the years, Dr. Schweitzer has tested positive for multiple viruses. She experiences severe lapses in memory, concentration and other cognitive skills. She suffers from “neurally mediated hypotension,” a form of low blood pressure arising from nerve dysfunction, which causes nausea, loss of balance, and fainting. Her muscle and joint pain can be intense, and she frequently requires a wheelchair. Her white blood cell counts have been way off; her immune system is often out of whack. She left her position at Villanova because of disability and has been unable to work most of the years since.
Like others with chronic fatigue syndrome, Dr. Schweitzer is used to having her illness ignored, mocked or treated as a manifestation of trauma, depression or hypochondria—not only by doctors, colleagues and strangers but by friends, family members and federal researchers, too. So when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last year that people with chronic fatigue syndrome are more likely to suffer from “maladaptive personality features”—in particular from “higher scores on neuroticism” and higher rates of “paranoid, schizoid, avoidant, obsessive-compulsive and depressive personality disorders”—Dr. Schweitzer dismissed the research as “incredibly stupid” but “not surprising.” In another recent study, the CDC had reported—also incredibly stupidly, from Dr. Schweitzer’s perspective–that childhood trauma, such as sexual or emotional abuse, was a “an important risk factor” for the illness.
For Dr. Schweitzer, other patients and advocates, and much if not all of the non-CDC research community involved with the illness, those two studies symbolize much of what has gone wrong with the agency’s research program on chronic fatigue syndrome. As the country’s leading public health organization, the CDC has enjoyed remarkable success in the fight against many diseases. But its history with chronic fatigue syndrome, commonly called CFS, is a matter of bitter–and ongoing—dispute.
Leave a Reply