A Lecture by Dr. Anthony Komaroff

April 24, 2010

The Massachusetts CFIDS/ME & FM Association is pleased to present the video of Dr. Komaroff's recent lecture to our Association.  We thank Dr. Komaroff for giving us permission to post his entire lecture on our website, where his insights can be made available to a wider audience.

INVISIBLE is a powerful and poignant film revealing what is not seen or known about CFIDS/ME (Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalopathy) and FM (Fibromyalgia). This film was created by a long-standing advocate and individual who has CFIDS/CFS and ME, Rik Carlson, with his friend, Michael Thurston, so they could bring to light the true essence, devastation and fallout caused by these illnesses.

In the months following the October 8, 2009 publication of a seminal article in Science magazine linking the novel retrovirus XMRV to CFIDS, several "follow-up" studies have been conducted in Europe in an attempt to either confirm or find evidence against these initial findings. The original study, published by researchers at the Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, NV in conjunction with the Cleveland Clinic and the National Cancer Institute, found a strong correlation between CFIDS and the presence of XMRV DNA such that 67% of CFIDS patients' DNA contained XMRV while only 3.7% of healthy controls had XMRV in their DNA.