| How You Can Help Advance Research Are you facing a surgical procedure? If so, you can help advance research! We are funding two separate research teams and they both are in need of tissue samples. If you know that you already need surgery and you're been diagnosed with ME/CFIDS, you can be an invaluable help. A tissue sample is a very simple procedure that involves a very thin scraping of skin taken during a surgical procedure. This is put onto a slide and affixed with paraffin. If you ask your surgeon to take two slides of each area he's able to and mail them to us, we will forward them to the researchers. Your privacy is always protected. The researchers will only have your age, your sex, and the type of surgery done (so they know the area that the sample is from) but they will not have your name or know where you live. The National CFIDS Foundation, Inc. will ask you to sign a privacy release form but the form itself explains that your information will go no further! By law, however, we have to inform you of your rights and have your signature. When the slide is fixed in paraffin, it has a long life. The researchers are able to use these specimens to verify their own research findings which they, presently, have to only take from blood samples. We are not asking you, of course, to submit to any invasive procedure merely to advance research. We are only asking this of patients who already know that they are facing surgery in the future out of necessity. Sending these samples directly to our office means that your privacy will always be protected as well as the research being presently done. Remember, if you are facing any surgical procedure, to present a copy of our anesthesia protocol to the anesthsiologist prior to the surgery. The most important thing for them to know is to avoid the sodium channel, a fact that has surfaced only during the past year from research funded by the NCF. |
The National CFIDS Foundation
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