Page 10 of "The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-up"

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     Shortly after we published the Kramer piece, I received a phone call from John Berendt, then an editor at Geo magazine. He had just read an interesting hypothesis about the cause of AIDS in New Scientist, a colorful British scientific journal that is a mixture of serious and “pop” science. The brief article was about a letter that had been published in one of the world’s leading medical journals, The Lancet. In the letter a young scientist in Boston named Jane Teas proposed for the first time that AIDS might be caused by African swine fever virus.[i] She pointed out that the symptoms of AIDS closely resembled those of African swine fever. She also noted that in Haiti, which also had a growing AIDS epidemic, there was simultaneously an epidemic of African swine fever virus in pigs. She hypothesized that vacationing gay men might have contracted the disease by eating undercooked pork.

     I instantly thought the theory was reasonable and should be explored. It had the ring of truth to it. I discussed the hypothesis with James D’Eramo, a man with a Ph.D. in medical ecology and infectious diseases, who had become our new science reporter, and I asked him to call Teas and arrange to interview her in Boston, which he did the following weekend. I was feeling very competitive about the story. I wanted New York Native to publish the first lengthy interview with her.

    When D’Eramo got back from Boston and filled me in on her ideas, I was even more convinced that her hypothesis was the most compelling one I had heard in two years. We published his interview with Teas in the May 23, 1983, issue and started it on the cover with the headline, “Is African Swine Fever the Cause?”

     The day the article appeared, something weird happened. A gay activist in New York attacked the idea publicly and said he thought the Teas idea was racist. That struck me as very strange and I wondered if we had hit some mysterious political nerve. It wasn’t the reaction I was expecting from anyone in the gay community.

     At the time that Teas wrote her letter, she was a postgraduate student at the Harvard School of Public Health and she didn’t have much money. I was soon talking to her on a regular basis and she told me she wished she could attend a conference in Florida about exotic animal diseases because some sessions of the meeting were going to focus on African swine fever. I offered to pay for the trip to the conference because I was convinced the scientists there might support her idea and help test it.

     She called us after the first day of the conference and was elated. She had presented her ideas at one of the African swine fever sessions. When she was done, the man who was leading the session denounced her idea to the audience, but afterwards, a number of scientists approached her and expressed their enthusiasm about the idea that there was a link between African swine fever and AIDS. She began to make arrangements at the conference to test her hypothesis with some of the scientists. At that point I thought the money to send her there had been well spent.

     But that all changed later that week. She called to tell us that at a reception near the end of the conference, she had seen the interested scientists talking to government officials who were in attendance. Subsequently, one by one, the scientists who had previously been enthusiastic about her idea approached her to tell her they would not be able to investigate her hypothesis. She felt that they had all been pressured to change their minds.

      From the very beginning of the epidemic, government scientists had given the impression that finding out what was the cause of AIDS was their first and only priority. It therefore puzzled me when there was government resistance about testing Teas’s very reasonable African swine fever hypothesis. When Jane Teas wrote directly to the CDC in April of 1983 to explain her ASFV idea, she received a cold shoulder. Dr. Michael Gregg, the deputy director of the Epidemiology Program Office, wrote to Teas that he had shared her thoughts with Dr. James Curran (of the AIDS Task Force) and Dr. John Bennett, Assistant Director for Medical Science at the Center for Infectious Diseases. Gregg wrote back to Teas, “Rest assured that if they and other members of the senior staff here feel that more effort should be directed to uncover any real association between [AIDS and African swine fever], it will be done. As I believe I implied in our telephone conversation, it is relatively difficult for outside scientists such as yourself to impact directly on research programs within a center such as CDC. Quite frankly, perhaps the best you can expect is an acknowledgement with thanks. Nevertheless, I do wish to convey to you my personal thanks for your obvious interest and encouragement. As you state, the power of the pen should not be underestimated.” In retrospect, this looks like the elitist don’t-bother-us attitude that is typical of the hermetically sealed world of abnormal science that AIDS turned out to be.

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[i] Jane Teas has a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University.

Has the CDC been hiding the role of African Swine Fever in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, AIDS, Alzheimer's, and many other illnesses by calling it HHV-6? Read the rest of the story in The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-up.

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If you have Amazon Prime or Kindle Unlimited, you can immediately begin reading The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-up and you will soon understand why the facts about the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemic have been hidden from the public for almost four decades.

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This is the book causing heated debates about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and HHV-6, "The Fifty Shades of AIDS Virus," in laboratories, doctor's offices, and homes all over the world.

                                                              

In his bestselling book, The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote, "I see the risks of a very strange acute virus spreading throughout the planet." This book by Charles Ortleb warns that the virus causing Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is that virus.

This book belongs in the library of anyone who wants to know the disturbing history of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemic and the deadly virus HHV-6. Why have the CDC and NIH pretended that the communicable disease fraudulently called "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" is a mystery for over three decades? By the end of this book of inconvenient truths the answer is crystal clear. The shocking news and bold analysis in this page-turner could lead to a revolution in the science and politics of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, fibromyalgia, AIDS, autism, and many other illnesses. Scientists, doctors, nurses, patients, journalists, politicians, and historians must begin their journey to a full understanding of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemic with this book.

As the publisher and editor-in-chief of a small newspaper in New York, Charles Ortleb was the first journalist to devote a publication to uncovering the truth about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. He assigned Neenyah Ostrom the duty of following every twist and turn of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome story. No newspaper in the world did more to warn the world about the virus which seems to be triggering Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and many other immunological disorders. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and AIDS are just the tip of the HHV-6 iceberg.

This provocative book will end the injustice of the silent treatment Neenyah Ostrom's reporting has been getting from the media and The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome community. Ostrom blew the lid off one of the biggest medical secrets of our time: the link between the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemic and AIDS.

Ostrom interviewed most of the major researchers in the field, as well as countless patients and government scientists. She uncovered so many similarities between Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and AIDS that she came to the conclusion that they are part of the same epidemic, and she argued that until their connection is admitted by top government researchers, there is little hope of making real progress in the fight against Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Charles Ortleb's book captures all the challenges and excitement of running a small newspaper that was publishing a brilliant journalist who essentially was the Woodward and Bernstein of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemic. In Rolling Stone, David Black said Ortleb's newspaper deserved a Pulitzer Prize. Randy Shilts praised Ortleb's newspaper in And the Band Played On.

                                                            

This book continues the work Ortleb has been doing to raise awareness about HHV-6 and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at his website HHV-6 University. Fewer and fewer people now pretend that HHV-6 is harmless. Thanks to Ortleb's efforts, more and more people are abandoning HHV-6 denialism and admitting the virus is at the center of a public health disaster.

 Hillary Johnson, the author of Osler's Web, called it "A rollicking, fascinating and important memoir."

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The HHV-6 University Report by rubiconmedia on Scribd