CARRIGON WROTE: "Do we have any statistics on how many children there are with CFIDS/ME?"
As far as I know there is NO data whatsoever on how many children and teens have CFIDS/ME - either at the US local/state/federal levels or in other countries (or worldwide). Remember, the CDC would not count children in their stupid, wasteful little surveys over the past two decades. Now, WHY would that be? Couple reasons come to mind. First, they don't want the US to know how many sick children are out there as that throws cold water on their psychiatric claims of "inability to deal with stress" or "childhood abuse". You can only make those claims without backing them up against adults since it is fairly easy to see if a child has been abused or is living in a stressful situation. Second, sick children engender strong emotions from people. The CDC does NOT want the population to be interested or mad at them for NOT dealing with sick children. People get nuts when children and the young are involved, ignored or mistreated and the CDC knows that. So, leave the kids out and only go after the adults - Especially the hysterical women who have nothing better to do than worry about their health (and don't ALL women have that luxury of time with family and jobs?). So, to my knowledge there is no data on how many kids are sick and disabled by this disease. Others can chime in as to why we don't have any data on the number of kids who are sick with CFIDS/ME. Maybe the Brits have data on ME kids. I bet they don't though.
I find it rather criminal on the part of the CDC that we have no numbers at all on CFIDS sick kids in the US. In my book, ignoring them is akin to neglecting them - and you just don't do that to children.
