STATEMENT by INVEST in ME

WPI RESEARCHERS DISCOVER RETROVIRAL LINK TO CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME
 


This is a day to celebrate for people with ME and their families.

Dr. Mikovits, her team at the Whittemore Peterson Institute (WPI), and her colleagues at the National Cancer Institute have determined a human retrovirus may be at the heart of this disease. Invest in ME have had enormous faith in the work performed by the WPI and their team have been represented at our past three annual International ME/CFS conferences in London.

The years during which thousands of research papers and media articles were written, and much research money wasted, purporting to explain away a life-destroying neurological disease with discussions of faulty illness beliefs, stress, school phobia, personality disorders, miracle cures etc. must now be consigned to the pile of faulty research which has so dominated Medical Research Council research policy toward ME.

Perhaps it is also time to revisit the work performed by Elaine De Freitas in 1991 - research which the USA Centres for Disease Control (CDC) was aware of, but did not acknowledge, and which is so well described in the Hillary Johnson's book Osler's Web.

Invest in ME are enormously encouraged by the current research which shows a potential new cause for this devastating neurological illness. More importantly it promises a diagnostic test is within reach.

Invest in ME feel this is a huge step achieved in such a short time and will bring hope to all people with ME and their families.

We now call on the UK government, the Chief Medical Officer and the Medical Research Council to acknowledge the vision and determination shown by the WPI team and support our view that only a research strategy based on adequately funded and coordinated biomedical research into ME will succeed in creating treatments and eventually a cure for this devastating neurological illness.

Last Updated: 16/10/2009