Mary Schweitzer and HHV-6
The Mary Schweitzer CFS Biomarker
One cannot fault suffering Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients for adopting a pragmatic attitude toward their dire situation. They pray every day for "something, anything" that will make them better. But unfortunately, there is something very anti-history, anti-intellectual and anti-science about the search for "something, anything." Too many patients and their self-appointed leaders don't seem to care about the actual political and scientific facts about their epidemic. They ignore the work that is solid, the facts that are known, and they disrespect the frontline journalism of Hillary Johnson, Neenyah Ostrom, and New York Native, work that stands today and will stand in a hundred years.
Too many new CFS activists grovel at the feet of "experts" who wish that the work of Hillary Johnson, Neenyah Ostrom and New York Native would just disappear from the face of the earth. Recently, five official "CFS grovellers" met with the Acting Assistant Secretary of Health to discuss Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Why weren't Neenyah Ostrom and Hillary Johnson invited to that meeting? It was a little like having a meeting about Watergate without inviting Woodward and Bernstein.
Instead of grovelling, the CFS community should start by asking the CDC and NIH to admit that for thirty years it has been engaged in a medical and scientific crime against humanity.
For many, pathetic grovelling at the feet of authority is the new pragmatism. If they only play nice and bring cupcakes, the scientific authorities in institutions that have screwed the CFS community will stop screwing them. (Trump can change!) As Einstein supposedly said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."
Sometimes science gets lucky when it takes the "something, anything" route. All kinds of treatments are thrown up against the wall to see what sticks. Sometimes one gets lucky. It seemed to have happened in AIDS, but anyone who has studied the materials here at HHV-6 University knows that ain't exactly true.
On the CFS scientific front, another form of pragmatism is the new concentration on a search for biomarkers. Unfortunately, that effort also has a "something, anything" desperation about it. The search for CFS biomarkers legitimizes the lies from the CDC and NIH that insist we're at ground zero in our understanding of this illness. The problem is that we actually know too much about this illness that is inconvenient and threatens the legitimacy and credibility of the CDC and NIH. All the clarifying moments in CFS, like when Japanese researchers called it "Low Natural Killer Syndrome" or Nancy Klimas called it a form of "acquired immune deficiency" are relegated to the CFS Bermuda Triangle. We don't want to know what we know, so it doesn't exist.
The big hope about biomarker studies is that it will result in a "something, anything" treatment that will work. And indeed, that could happen. But it doesn't get to the bottom of the truth about this transmissible and multisystemic disease. Supporters of biomarker research rarely discuss Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as a transmissible illness that doesn't only have a past and an present but also a future. In other words, while they are doing their biomarker research, the illness is spreading and spreading. Something is spreading. In the old days we used to call this "a cause." But causation is so yesteryear.
The first rule of CFS grovelling is not to discuss transmissibility or "causation." That would get one kicked out of a meeting with the government's handpuppets, no matter how low one bowed or how many cupcakes one brought to the meeting.
In some ways the search for biomarkers may qualify as a search for a better cover-up of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at a time when the government is crying crocodile tears and is making efforts to seem seriously engaged in the problem. Biomarkers will help distract the public's attention from the fact that they (the CDC and NIH) have allowed an agent causing an AIDS-like (or AIDS Spectrum) illness to spread for over thirty years. Biomarkers are also a new way for hungry scientists to get on the emerging Chronic Fatigue Syndrome gravy train, such as it is.
The problem with a multisystemic disease like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is that the search for biomarkers is like the blind men dong research on the elephant. What makes it totally absurd is that anyone who really knows the solid scientific research that exists and the essential journalism of Hillary Johnson, Neenyah Ostrom and New York Native can already clearly see the elephant.
The search for biomarkers of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a great opportunity for power players like Ian Lipkin to stake out claims for his own cockamamie paradigm for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Any day that Ian Lipkin is in his laboratory working on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a good day for socipathic office of de facto CFS/AIDS Czar Anthony Fauci. Ian Lipkin doesn't dare tell the public about the transmissibility of CFS and its connection to AIDS. Fauci would have a volcanic snit fit that would be felt in every corridor of scientific power.
Perhaps the most important thing about biomarker research is that it helps obfuscate the role of HHV-6 in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. HHV-6 is so threatening to the credibility of the CDC and NIH that it can't even be discussed as a biomarker, let alone cause.
This is where outspoken CFS patient and intellectual Mary Schweitzer comes in.
Over and over in public forums and on the internet, Mary Schweitzer Ph.D. has told the story about her experience with Ampligen treatment for her Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. When she was treated with Ampligen, her levels of HHV-6 went down and she got better. When she stopped treatment with Ampligen her levels of HHV-6 went back up and she got sick again.
Pretty simple, no? Given that we live in the age of attention deficits and the fact that CFS patients have gtrouble focusing or remembering anything, we'll repeat that. When she was treated with Ampligen, her levels of HHV-6 went down and she got better. When she stopped treatment with Ampligen her levels of HHV-6 went back up and she got sick again.
Given the new obsession with biomarkers, maybe it makes pragmatic sense to call HHV-6 "the Mary Schweitzer CFS biomarker." If the CFS community is afraid to discuss HHV-6 as a transmissible cause of their illness, perhaps the euphemism of "the Mary Schweitzer CFS biomarker" is sexy enough to shift the whole CFS paradigm. Maybe the whole field should focus on treatments for "the Mary Schweitzer CFS biomarker."
Starting with Ampligen.
