-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- -------- forwarded message -------- From: "Roy L. Beavers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: emfguru <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 Subj: US NIH "spins" another possibly EMF related issue. (Maisch).. Hi everybody: I have held on to this long message for a few days -- thinking we might get a "break" in the flow of good messages ... but the storms in the U.S. seem to have resulted in an INCREASE...... The value of the following message is two-fold: (1) Some EMF research has pointed to a possible connection between CFS and EMF.... That possibility deserves to be a part of the following effort.... But (2) even more, I am very uncomfortable at the behavior of NIH that is being reported below.....!!! It looks like another case where America's RICH health bureaucracy is serving the cause of its pharmaceutical **patron** industries.....!!! Be sure you read down to the statements by Dr. Schweitzer......!!! Is there no shame in any of our governmental bureaucracies??? Answer: Not in the Clinton Administration.....!!! They are responsive to three motivations: politics, politics, politics..... And the large $$$$$$$ political contributions which are essential to the perpetuation of their remaining in power under America's corrupt system...... "Where is Donna Shalala?" asks one of the writers below???...... She is right in the middle of the political $$$$$$$$, that's where she is....... Cheerio..... Roy Beavers (EMFguru) [EMAIL PROTECTED] ..It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.. NEW!!! Website... http://emfguru.com ................People are more important than profits.............. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Don Maisch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 Subj: US NIH spins another possibly related issue. Dear Roy I thought you would find this interesting. There may be a secret agenda in the NIH's attempts to keep CFS classified a form of psychiatric illness. Could it be that the US government is well aware of the Russian research that clearly identifies EMR exposure as a causitive factor immune system dysfunction, with symptoms remarkably similar to "CFS", and is trying to do a cover up? Regards Don Press Release from "The CFIDS/M.E. Information Source": http://www.cfids-me.org/index.html#NIH _________________________________________________ For Immediate Release The NIH has secretly put together what they are calling a "State of the Science" conference to help inform NIH decision-makers about the current status of research on CFS. The only "experts" they have invited are Stephen Straus (of NIH), Mark Demitrack (of Eli Lilly), Simon Wesseley (from the UK), and Michael Sharpe (also from the UK). All are strongly biased in favor of the belief that CFS/M.E. is caused by "stress" and is a form of psychiatric illness they call "functional somatization;" Straus and Demitrack recommend SSRI's (Prozac) and "stress reduction," Wessely recommends traditional psychiatric talking therapy, and Sharpe recommends "cognitive behavior therapy;" all four recommend exercise. These are the only therapies any of the four acknowledges as valid. Such a narrow perspective can only result in the further development of a strongly biased picture of CFS/M.E. This meeting is not insignificant; NIH has stated that the intention is to "teach" NIH decision-makers "about CFS." The meeting will have a strong influence on future NIH policy towards the disease, research funding, and the plight of patients. As Jon Sterling (former president of the NJ CFS Assoc. and current patient representative on the CFSCC) stated in a formal letter of protest, "the view of these 'experts' would take us back to 1991 in terms of scientific progress in CFS research." It is both perplexing and shocking that NIH ignored the expertise of the three official medical representatives to the CFSCC (the Congressionally-chartered Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Coordinating Committee of the U.S. DHHS) in both the planning and outcome of the meeting. Perplexing in that the idea for such a meeting originated within the CFSCC, but NIH took command and explicitly rejected any input from the body that is supposed to be coordinating DHHS policy on CFS; shocking that any effort at a true "survey of the science" would deliberately exclude these three highly-respected researchers: Dr. Anthony Komaroff (Harvard), Dr. Peter Rowe (Johns Hopkins), and Dr. Nancy Klimas (Miami). The NIH has relented and will permit them to attend (though they informed them too late for Komaroff to be able to be there) -- but Rowe and Klimas will be permitted there only as "observers," not as "participants." Recipients of NIH external grants for CFS research in the past five years were also deliberately excluded. When asked why, NIH responded that "they would be prejudiced." One wonders, then, why Straus and Demitrack have been included, because they have been beneficiaries of internal NIH grants for years -- and unlike external grants, internal grants are given without competition or the requirement of professional peer review. Indeed, it has been years since Straus has won an external NIH grant to study CFS. If the experts chosen by peer review for NIH grants are viewed as so unprofessional as to be able to discuss their research in perspective, why have Straus -- who also has his own research agenda -- and Demitrack -- who not only shares Straus's research interests, but is himself external to NIH -- been included? Why have two British researchers been brought in? What on earth is going on? Bluntly speaking, Stephen Straus has had influence on the U.S. government's interpretation of CFS far beyond any accomplishments in the way of research; he is a virologist, but his one foray into a virological cause of CFS (what he once called Chronic Epstein-Barr) turned into a highly-publicized failure. Since then, his focus has solely been on psychological causation -- well outside his own area of expertise. Ironically, Straus and Demitrack's last published research found patients with CFS/M.E. to have below- normal levels of cortisol, when a theory of psychological causation should have produced the finding of above- normal levels. Straus has thus ignored even the results of his own research when it has contradicted his beliefs about this disease. To include only Straus, his research partner, and two allies from the United Kingdom in their personal battle to focus on psychological causes as the sole basis of CFS, is grossly insulting to the entire CFS/M.E. community -- both patients and professionals. The bulk of published peer reviewed research on CFS today occurs not in psychiatry, but in the fields of neurology, cardiology, immunology, endocrinology, and biochemistry -- as a quick search of Medline will confirm. To repeat: none of these fields have been included in NIH's so-called "State of the Science" meeting. Given the recent uproar over misspending at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, it is stunning that NIH would so blatantly disregard the wishes not only of the CFS/ME research and patient community, but the U.S. Congress and DHHS's own Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Coordinating Committee (CFSCC). The medical representatives on the CFSCC, explicitly excluded from this conference, have substantial peer-reviewed publications and are on the faculty of highly-regarded medical schools: Dr. Anthony Komaroff of Harvard has numerous publications demonstrating neurological damage in CFS; Dr. Nancy Klimas of Miami has a substantial publication record in the immunology of AIDS and CFS; and Dr. Peter Rowe, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins, counts among other peer reviewed publications the only complete research article on CFS that has appeared in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association, an essay demonstrating the role of dysautonomia (autonomic nervous system dysfunction) in CFS, which was published in JAMA in the fall of 1995. Dr. Klimas also manages one of three federally-funded CFS research clinics; the other two were also ignored. Dr. Benjamin Natelson and his staff at the New Jersey CFS Clinic have produced numerous peer-reviewed publications in the fields of biomechanics, neurology, and immunology; Dr. Dedra Buchwald's CFS clinic in Seattle, Washington, has produced important research on demography and genetics; she is currently working on a study of twins to isolate the genetic makeup of patients with CFS. None of these researchers are proponents of the theory that CFS can best be described as "functional somatization;" indeed, Natelson's group has published several studies demonstrating that psychological causation cannot explain the symptoms of CFS/M.E. (none of which is referred to in Straus's work). To see the breadth of scholarly research in the field of CFS that has been excluded from NIH's conceptualization of CFS, you can find the following on the web: + Abstracts of the most recent AACFS Research Conference held in Boston, MA, October 1998 http://www.cfids-me.org/aacfs + "Report from Second World Conference on CFS and Related Disorders" held in Brussels, Belgium, September 1999 http://www.sonic.net/melissk/brussels1.html + Proceedings of the 1999 Sydney ME/CFS Conference in Australia. http://www.ahmf.org/conf99.htm See also the CFIDS/M.E. Information Page: http://www.cfids-me.org/ particularly these sections: + Diagnosing and Treating CFIDS/M.E. and Fibromyalgia http://www.cfids-me.org/index.html#Diagnosis + Medical Research and References http://www.cfids-me.org/index.html#medical + General Information about CFIDS/M.E. http://www.cfids-me.org/index.html#Info The CFIDS/M.E. community is asking that the NIH postpone this meeting immediately, and start over by cooperating with the Congressionally-chartered CFSCC (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Coordinating Committee of DHHS). We also want to know how this could possibly have happened. Why have a committee to coordinate policy on a "seriously debilitating" (according to the CDC) condition such as CFS if the policymakers are going to completely ignore the expertise represented on that committee? In particular, why is a single NIH researcher permitted to exercise such control over scholarly information and research funding, particularly when he has demonstrated such outright disdain for any research that might conflict with his own preconceptions of psychological causation? Dr. Straus recently left his position at NIAID and whatever connection he had to CFS research to become the new director of the Office of Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Why should he continue to retain such control over the way policy is decided -- particularly given that there already exists an interagency committee with nationally-recognized experts whom one would have presumed would have been the FIRST researchers contacted? In May the Department of Health and Human Service's Office of Inspector General confirmed CFS advocate's longstanding insistence that the CDC was diverting CFS funding to other projects without informing Congress. CDC apologized, and has been left to proceed as if everything is okay now. Yet the chief researcher in charge of CFS at the CDC informed the CFSCC in November that he has no intention of ever finishing the projects that Congress had asked of the CDC that were abandoned because of the false lack of funds. Demographic studies of the prevalence of CDC among adolescents, minority groups, and its effects upon pregnancy, were thrown out and will not be resumed. Why is this okay? Now the NIH puts together a meeting in secret that is in direct defiance of the Congressionally-chartered CFSCC, limiting involvement to the same internal investigator and his allies who have dominated CFS funding at the NIH for over 15 years. Has nothing changed? Why is this okay? Where is Donna Shalala in all of this? Where are our congressional representatives, who chartered the CFSCC in the first place? The time is ripe for a high-quality investigative report by a good news bureau. Since the powerful health bureaucracies of DHHS show no signs of policing themselves, it is time for the press to take up its role as the traditional guardians of the public's right to know. What is the reason behind this continued insistence on "psychological causation," as evidence mounts in other research areas to the contrary? The "State of the Science" meeting is scheduled for the Hubert Humphrey Building (DHHS headquarters) in Washington, D.C., all day Monday, February 7. The public has the right to attend. We hope that representatives of the U.S. and international press will be there. On Tuesday, February 8, the CFSCC will meet at the same place -- the Hubert Humphrey Building (DHHS headquarters) in Washington, DC. It is important that representatives of the press attend this meeting to report back to the public why the NIH should be listening to the experts in this federally-chartered committee. Further information on this crisis can be found on the website of the CFIDS Association of America at: http://www.cfids.org/advocacy/sos.html Mary M. Schweitzer, Ph.D. The CFIDS/M.E. Information Source http://www.cfids-me.org/ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________ EMFacts Consultancy PO Box 96, North Hobart, 7002 Tasmania, Australia Phone: (03) 62430195 Fax: (03) 62430340 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ICQ: 30814841 Web: http://www.tassie.net.au/emfacts/ ______________________________ <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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