Hip
Senior Member
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The problem here is, no institution we know is willing to help. That is what drives us crazy.
This is definitely a terrible state of affairs in China, and every Chinese person I have communicated with who appeared to have this illness has said the same thing: about the government in China doing next to nothing.
These patients told me that not only does the Chinese government do very little in terms of research into this illness, the government also have stated that it is psychologically caused (which is in contradiction to what some virologists in China say, but the virologists do not want to risk causing trouble by contradicting the government view).
I think the best chances of getting research done may be by going out of China.
A few years ago, I was in contact with one Chinese patient, Kevin, with the disease who was studying at Stanford University in California. He was trying to get research on the Chinese virus done in the USA. He was in contact with Prof Ian Lipkin's department, the Center for Infection and Immunity, at Columbia University. The idea was to identify the Chinese pathogen using molecular methods such as high-throughput sequencing (which identifies pathogens by their genetic fingerprint). Columbia has lots of expertise in this area. But I never heard more from Kevin. One of the emails I gave you is Kevin's.
Early on in this outbreak of the Chinese virus, Professor Charles Chiu of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of California got involved in investigating this disease, and I heard that some patient blood / tissue samples were sent to his lab in California, but I heard nothing more.
It is hard to say though whether this outbreak of the Chinese "HIV-like" virus is still growing, or whether it has gone into decline. If you look at the historical infectious outbreaks of ME/CFS in different countries over the last 100 years, you find that the outbreaks do not last long, they typically only last for 2 or 3 years.
In terms of your symptoms, which symptoms do you think might prevent you from going to UCL and studying there? Is it the fatigue, which might make study difficult? Or perhaps the "brain fog" (brain fog = cognitive problems such as memory difficulties, and difficulty in mental concentration)? Or the anxiety symptoms that this neurological virus induces?