I am a tenured, published, economic historian at Villanova -- who has been disabled since October 24, 1994, when I collapsed with the disease that is the center of this ... game -- CFIDS, or chronic fatigue syndrome.
If you know anything about disability rankings, I have a documented Karnovsky score of 40.
Now, I know just about everything there is to know about CFIDS (and Ampligen) (and Hemispherx) -- but I don't know much about the stock market.
I am simultaneously fascinated by the culture here -- is this usual???
And horrified by the larger implications.
And particularly horrified because the CDC has been criminally slow in getting the word out to the public about this disease -- which DOES affect AT LEAST 400,000 adults (and also equally prevalent in adolescents) -- and there's roughly a quarter million people estimated undiagnosed with the disease, mostly people of color and people of lower income. Four men for every six women.
The stereotype is from early studies by the CDC of diagnosed patients that came out 98 percent white female upper middle class. And that's where the lower numbers come from too -- as well as the name "chronic fatigue syndrome" -- very insulting if you think ofit as directly entirely toward "over-achieving women" (payback for going against their "nature") -- the disease already had a name in the U.K. and Canada, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, or M.E., for THIRTY YEARS before the CDC "discovered" it in Nevada and gave it this insulting name.
There is no research money, there's a whistle blower coming forward about how the CDC has diverted funds allocated for CFIDS to other diseases -- the politics of this disease is INSANE.
And now I find THIS stuff. As much disinformation is out there (including Princeton pomo English professor Elaine Showalter who writes that CFIDS is "group hysteria" -- similar to reportings of UFOs and alien abductions ... she devoted a paragraph to mocking me, personally, in Lingua Franca, dear woman.) -- we don't need disinformation coming from some fast-shooting short-seller on Wall Street!!!!
And is this any way to determine which drugs get developed and which don't? How do you get a drug like this tested? If it doesn't get tested because the company is underfinanced, what happens to the patients? Believe me, the "invisible hand" isn't picking this up.
If you aren't interested in the Schumpeterian implications of all this, you might at least want to follow the imbroglio. It's a pip.
Take your pick where you want to go discussing this. But I thought this was the perfect place to share this information, and to ask -- WHAT THE BLEEP IS GOING ON HERE?????
thank you.
Mary Schweitzer, Assoc. Prof., Dept. of History, Villanova University (on medical leave since January 1995 with CFIDS) mailto:schweit2 at ix.netcom.com The CFIDS/M.E. Information Page: http://www.cfids-me.org/ My unpublished history/economics papers:
http://www.delaware.infi.net/~msch/