The NIH’s Intramural study constitutes the biggest “fishing expedition” ever done in this disease. From stays in metabolic chambers, to ME/CFS patients immune systems being transplanted into mice, to their “brains” (neurons) being grown in a dish, this study is going where no study has gone
It has the potential to upend what we know about ME/CFS and provide a solid foundation for future work. Former NIH employee and Washington Post reporter Brian Vastag went through the first part of the study. Find how what he had to say about it in
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I have had really bad M.E for 21+ years , its had a lot of not great effects on my life , as well as feeling very ill-not being able to see family ,loosing touch with my friends, not being able to my job -teaching which I loved, being poor, not going to a single parents evening for my daughter throughout her time at secondary school and sixth form, not seeing family who wanted to see me. I’ve also had various experiences like most people do,with M.E; of people I might normally have expected to be supportive and helpful, or at the very least polite-being actively dispising , insulting, disbelieving and rude. – So, you can see I have a stake in M.E progress;-but still I don’t want to get better at the expense of innocent animals , who have as much right to their own existance as any other creature ,being tormented and damaged and treated as so much disposable lab equipment- because theyr’e not- they are alive and they have feelings- even little mice.I have seen the odd piece of news like this before, I relise other people may feel differently; but I wanted to go on record somewhere as a someone with M.E -to say I don’t want to get well at the expence of animal experimentation, I’d rather stay ill- for the rest of my life, if necessay.There is, as well as any ethical problems, of course the fact the animal experiments are often not relibal ways to test things; although – that’s not my main reason for objection. A little mouse can’t defend its self form a human being-but why should it have ‘human immune systems’ transplanted into them?-that can’t possibly be very nice for them- can it?