Deborah Waroff via CO-CURE (my bolds) writes:
"On the death of Dr. Reeves we need to remember and mourn how all his superiors at CDC and HSS have joined in his lack of empathy, caring and duty to our country. Not one CDC head has ever taken any interest in our fate or in managing the departments they are charged with managing. It is understandable that Dr. Unger, as his long-time colleague and subordinate, has been slow in pulling away from Dr.Reeves' ill-conceived orthodoxy. It is for that reason that after Dr. Reeves was promoted sideways due to researchers' and patients strong complaints, we all petitioned Secretary Sibelius, Dr. Francis Collins, Dr. Thomas Frieden, Dr. Koh, and others to name a new chief for "CFS" at CDC instead of acting chief Dr. Unger. It is not that Dr. Unger is not intellegent or capable. It is that the entrenchment of Dr. Reeve's intellectually corrupt regime over 25 years required that change be executed by a person who was entirely free of ties with it. We deserved someone with a strong background in biomedical sciences, a record of research achievement, and some prior success in management of pioneering research. A serious head-hunt should have been conducted, scouring places such as the Rockefeller Institute, Cleveland Clinic, university medical centers,etc. It really wasn't fair either to us or to Dr. Unger that she should have had to be lumbered with cleaning up a mighty mess made by a progenitor she had worked so closely with and who, until the other day, remained in the same institution. We needed someone fresh and bold.
Let us remember that Dr. Reeves has left undone essentially all important work that needs to be done on the disease that struck Incline Village in 1984-85, and struck many others elsewhere, before and since.
He shirked his duty to his country.
He did not do the job he was paid to do.
Nor did those before him, who misappropriated the moneys Congress allocated.
CDC has yet to do any real epidemiology on the disease. Their prior gestures have been something out of Road Runner cartoons by Warner Bros.
The relationships with Abt and Emory are too monopolistic and exclusive have yet to produce anything serious and important. They should be ended, pronto.
Basically there has been no real management evident at CDC for as long as I've been ill, which is 23 years now. That helped Reeves to get away with his negligence and distortions. Under Bush Julie Geberding squandered millions on architecture and interior design. Now she is Merck's head of vaccines, and is doing a brilliant job of maintaining support for their vaccine products from CDC. Under Obama Tom Frieden made an initial effort to get rid of the excess interior bling she left, but seems not to have followed with the needed management overhaul. His accomplishments in New York and so far in Atlanta have been the broad strokes of preventive public health such as banning smoking in our New York bars and restaurants; he seems less interested in delving into tangled mysteries like our disease or undertaking management restructuring.
Now let us pray:
For statistically very significant epidemiological study, including all biological dimensions, of the seriously ill bedbound, housebound, and near-housebound patients with "CFS"or M.E.
For equivalent major epidemiological study of the wider cohort of patients beginning at north Nevada and the other five major outbreaks of the 1980s and working up to a national distribution from there. This must be extensive, in person from the start, and relying biological parameters. No telephone surveys and no unrepresentave skews like Reeve's Georgia-only studies.
For an immediate re-write of the CDC web material so that it cites work on biomarkers and symptoms (immune,viral,genetic,neural, gastrointestinal) and at the same time eliminates harmful and disproven recommendations for CBT and GET.
For CDC guidelines on "CFS" and ME patient precautions before and after surgery.
For overhaul and removal of key NIH personnel who have blocked research and funding for the past 25 years, wrongly exiling "CFS" from NIAID. (It is now the only disease common to men that had to find refuge under "Women's Health")
For the epidemiological studies to result in thoroughly documented and well-defined name or names.
For at least $150 million per year in research grants for biomedical research, including biomedical treatment and cure."