By Rene Firth

From Fall 2013 Forum

I've got a cousin who has Parkinson's. I recently met a man who lives two streets away that has Hunington's. My mother-in-law has breast cancer. All these diseases are autoimmune just as CFIDS/ME was proven to be a few years ago. Why don't they have better ways to deal with them? Well, because nobody ever bothered to find out what was causing them! And the dirty but honest truth is the one thing that keeps my hopes up because only the truth is going to let us have a better life. I relish the day that my newsletter is in my mailbox because I know I'm going to read more and more of the truth!

Near the end of June, I read an article by Steve Ruark in the New York Times. It was called "Breaking the Seal on Drug Research" and it told about honesty in the drug industry and how there's a problem about publishing the honest results of drug trials and positive results are published but other that were not good news about a drug were never published which gives very misleading data about side effects and other nasty things associated with a drug and how an anti-flu drug called Tamiflu could change all that. It told about the Cochrane Collaboration that came about due to Tamiflu that actually harmed a lot of children and how the new collaboration looks into some billion-dollar drugs to release clinical data to researchers upon request. Now the editor of the British Medical Journal won't publish results of clinical trials unless the drug companies and researchers have agreed to provide any data upon request! And I thought of the National CFIDS Foundation's Forum that had articles years and years ago written by patients that were actually harmed by the drug Ampligen. It's taken so long to have the world catch up to the honesty of the Forum!

And now, as unpopular as it may be, the Forum let me know the cause of this illness and I read how they make sure that every single thing that has been proven in CFIDS/ME can fit in and connect scientifically. I wasn't at all familiar with radiation when they announced it was the cause of this illness and wondered if my microwave or my cellphone was to blame. I found out that the type of radiation they emit isn't harmful. A Forum article explained those were non-ionizing radiation and they were pointing to ionizing radiation. I looked that up and found that initial symptoms of ionizing radiation caused nausea and fatigue! After a long time, it can even cause hair loss annd destruction of the intestinal lining and, yes, nervous system damage. I read that radiation can't be seen or heard nor does it smell. It can collect on your skin or clothing and you wouldn't know it but it can also find its way into food and water and milk and so many other products. And, yes, that it would eventually produce cancer.

It's only about knowing what the real problem is and addressing it honestly that drives us forward toward actual help. Instead of doing the same already known research again and again and again, the NCF seems more than determined to find answers that every patient needs. Well, that's not surprising since so many volunteers of this charity are patients themselves but I appreciate it more and more when I see the same things being funded by other charities that have already been answered.

Thanks, NCF! Every one of you! As James A. Garfield once said, "The truth will set you free but first it will make you miserable." Keep up the whole truth and keep funding the way for science to help us all.

Rene is from Oklahoma.