Tag Archives: government

Burning Underground

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Jennie Spotila

Just over a year ago, advocate Leela Play noticed something odd on a federal contracting website. What she found was a notice of intent to award a sole source contract to the Institute of Medicine to create clinical diagnostic criteria … Continue reading →

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Turnover

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Jennie Spotila

Multiple sources have confirmed that Dr. Nancy Lee is stepping down as Designated Federal Officer of the CFS Advisory Committee. Also departing is her assistant DFO, Marty Bond. Dr. Lee was a lightning rod for criticism and controversy. During her … Continue reading →

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Renewal?

Posted on August 20, 2014 by Jennie Spotila

Will the CFS Advisory Committee be back this fall? Not many people seem to be paying attention to the fact that it could potentially disappear. The CFSAC is a chartered federal advisory committee, and by law it must be renewed … Continue reading →

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La La La, I Can’t Hear You

Posted on August 4, 2014 by Jennie Spotila

On May 28th, Mary Dimmock and I sent NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins a 38 page packet outlining our concerns that the P2P Workshop will not advance the ME/CFS research field, and may even set it back. We finally got … Continue reading →

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P2P: The Question They Will Not Ask

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Jennie Spotila

by Mary Dimmock and Jennie Spotila The most important question about ME/CFS – the question that is the cornerstone for every aspect of ME/CFS science – is the question that the P2P Workshop will not ask: How do ME and … Continue reading →

Posted in Advocacy, Commentary, Research | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 38 Comments

Parsing CFSAC

Posted on June 24, 2014 by Jennie Spotila

I feel like a broken record, saying that the June 16-17th CFS Advisory Committee meeting was frustrating. This meeting struck me as a tangle of threads that can only be understood by teasing them apart. There were signals buried in … Continue reading →

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P2P: Taking Shape

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Jennie Spotila

The P2P ME/CFS Workshop has been approved and is scheduled for December 9-10th, 2014. The focus of this post is on analyzing four components of the information released by NIH yesterday: P2P is describing our disease as fatigue, without post-exertional … Continue reading →

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Guest Post: CFSAC Testimony of Andrew Bokelman

Posted on June 19, 2014 by Jennie Spotila

Andrew Bokelman was scheduled to deliver public comment to the CFS Advisory Committee on June 17th and was the first telephone commenter. His call was terminated by the operator prior to his 3 minutes being up. After protest on Andrew’s … Continue reading →

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Guest Post: CFSAC Comments of Charmian Proskauer

Posted on June 17, 2014 by Jennie Spotila

Charmian delivered these comments at today’s CFS Advisory Committee meeting. She has kindly given me permission to publish them here in their entirety. My name is Charmian Proskauer, and I currently serve as President of the Massachusetts CFIDS/ME & FM … Continue reading →

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Comment for the June 2014 CFS Advisory Committee

Posted on June 17, 2014 by Jennie Spotila

These are the comments I delivered by telephone to the CFS Advisory Committee today. For the record, the operator told me that they were instructed to cut people off precisely at 3 minutes. Mary Dimmock and I wrote to Dr. … Continue reading →

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