"Forgotten Plague" screening - Nov 15 2014

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Special preview screening of the film "Forgotten Plague: M.E. and the Future of Medicine" - a new documentary by Co-Directors Ryan Prior and Nicole Castillo.

Our Association is honored to have the opportunity to host a pre-release screening of the film "Forgotten Plague: M.E. and the Future of Medicine" - a new documentary by Co-Directors Ryan Prior and Nicole Castillo. Audience Q&A with the film makers after the showing (via Skype). Other special guests may be present.

Complex diseases are increasingly difficult to treat in a medical system that has parsed out the body into a myriad of specific systems. We are failing to see the whole person.

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS, also known as M.E. or myalgic encephalomyelitis) is perhaps the perfect metaphor for the blind spots in our medical system. It is a difficult-to-diagnose disease that spans the neurological, endocrine, and immune systems. Its complexity eludes a medical establishment that thrives on specialty. And because physicians have neither the time nor the toolkit to parse out its many nuances, there is a tragic history of patients being consigned to lifetimes of psychiatric care that is useless at best, and lethal at worst.

The study of ME/CFS falls through the cracks in the intellectual establishment and the patients often fall through the holes in the social safety net. A million Americans and 17 million people are left without a scientific, political, or social voice in what journalist Llewellyn King has called "the great under-reported medical story of the times."

Against the background, this film tells the story of a new breed of scientists at this crossroads in medicine; they seek to levy a dizzying array of new tools and disciplines in molecular biology and computer science to revamp the way scientific medicine is practiced not just in ME/CFS, but across all of healthcare itself. This new personalized medicine promises a shift in human health and prosperity in the 21st century. This film takes us from ME/CFS to the future of medicine itself.

Ryan and Nicole's work was funded by the ME/CFS community through Kickstarter, and has been written up in USA Today, White House Chronicle, Phoenix Rising, and other media publications.

When
November 15th, 2014 from  1:00 PM to  3:30 PM
Location
Lebowitz Meeting Hall (downstairs)
Morse Institute Library
14 East Central Street
Natick, MA 01760