[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 48 (Tuesday, April 16, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H3395]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                CFS IS A DEVASTATING INFECTIOUS DISEASE

  (Mr. NADLER asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, a recently published book, Osler's Web, by 
Hillary Johnson, charges with impressive evidence that the Federal 
Center for Disease Control has ignored substantial clinical and 
epidemiological evidence that chronic fatigue syndrome is a devastating 
infectious disease caused by a specific virus rather than a 
psychosomatic illness as the CDC has claimed. Miss Johnson asserts that 
there is impressive evidence the chronic fatigue syndrome is, in fact, 
an immunological disease with many of the same characteristics as AIDS, 
that HHV-6, a virus may be a precipitating factor or a cofactor in CFS 
and in other immunological diseases, including AIDS, and that 
distinguished scientists who have come to the same or similar 
conclusion have been systematically ostracized and denied funding for 
the research by a snall clique at the Center for Disease Control.
  I have already contacted Health and Human Services Secretary Donna 
Shalala requesting that she investigate these disturbing allegations, 
and I now urge my colleagues to join me in directing the GAO to look 
into this matter as well.

                          ____________________