IN SEARCH OF THE TIPPING POINT

Three ME/CFS patients launch a campaign to get the government’s attention

Beginning today, ME/CFS patients Rivka Solomon, Charlotte von Salis and Robert Miller are launching the “Time for Action” campaign. Using email, fax and phone, the trio are asking ME/CFS patients to contact Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Dr. Anthony Fauci and Director of the National Institutes of Health Dr. Francis Collins every day and pose the same question: “What have you done for ME/CFS today?  Patients and their families are waiting.” 

Robert Miller organized the September 7 meeting of nine patients and their families with NIH scientists Michael Gottesman, Paul Plotz and Roland Owens, in Bethesda, Maryland, right before the NIH's first international XMRV conference began. Along with Miller, Solomon and von Salis were among the patients who attended.

Solomon’s mother was also there—and came up with the idea for the new campaign. “Bug them every day!” she advised her daughter.  It was a light-bulb moment for Solomon.  “It lets the government know we’re watching them, waiting for them to help us," she explains. "And it’s what we’re calling ‘advocacy made easy.’ This way we can include everyone in the action campaign—even the severely ill. The way I see it, and I'm speaking for myself personally here, this illness and we patients who suffer from it have been ignored, delegitimized, psychologized and marginalized since the early 1980s, when many of us first got sick.

Solomon, a playwright from Boston, and Miller, a former fire boss in Utah (who moved to Reno, Nevada, last year for the experimental HIV and ME/CFS intravenous drug Ampligen from CFS-literate physician Dr. Daniel Peterson) have been ill for a quarter century.

Von Salis, a lawyer, lives outside Washington, D.C., and has spent the last two decades bed-bound or house-bound. “NIH Deputy Director Gottesman pointed out during our meeting that AIDS activists definitely had an impact on the NIH's response to their disease,” von Salis recalls. “ME/CFS requires as strong a response from the NIH as AIDS did, especially in light of recent research indicating a retroviral association. Increasingly greater numbers of patients, their families and friends are completely fed up with the lack of governmental response to ME/CFS and are prepared to act, just as PWAs [persons with AIDS] did. This simple campaign puts the NIH on notice that we’re not about to remain silent and accept the status quo. If we don’t get a response or the response is inadequate, we will follow up with another action."

Solomon agrees.  Although she was pleased with the September 7 meeting between ME/CFS patients and NIH officials, as well as the NIH two-day international XMRV conference, she’s looking for a little less conversation and a little more action on the part of both patients and government.  "We won't get fast-track clinical trials by waiting for them," she says. "We need to demand them. We won't get funding for ME/CFS centers of excellence by waiting for them. We need to demand them. The NIH will see a repeat of the ACT UP days of AIDS activism if they don’t move to actually help us ME/CFS patients, and fast."
 

Contact info:
National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease
Director Anthony Fauci
Email: afauci@niaid.nih.gov
Phone: 301-496-2263
Fax: 301-402-3573

National Institutes of Health
Director Francis Collins
Email: collinsf@od.nih.gov
Phone: 301-496-2433
Fax: 301-402-2700

Robert Miller is tracking patient response to the Time for Action campaign and would appreciate patients sending him a copy of any emails sent to Fauci and Collins: hebs1reel@yahoo.com