By Gail Kansky

Winter 2016-2017

An announcement came at the end of October that read, “Dr. David Bell Joins OMF Scientific Advisory Board” yet, directly under the bold announcement the Open Medicine Foundation stated, “Posted on March 22, 2016.” The October announcement even had a video attached where David Bell addressed a very small group of patients. Yet David Sheffield Bell, M.D. knows the cause is radiation and has not been the pediatric “hero” that the Open Medicine Foundation claims.

Let’s begin after he dismissed all of his patients from out-of-town and refused to give them their medical records — which is illegal in this country! In the year 2000, he wrote a book that was titled The Faces of CFS and, in the book, told about one patient, Maggie, and reported, “Her body felt leaden and curiously toxic; she felt a certain kinship with Chernobyl’s radiation sickness victims.” A few years later, in 2003, he began to dismiss his instate patients but the government, via Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson, appointed him the chairman of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Advisory Committee (CFSAC). The charter of the CFSAC was to make recommendations on the state of knowledge, diagnostic and treatment and ways to improve the quality of life for the patient. The government has ignored all recommendations made by the CFSAC for decades but, a year before Bell was appointed chairman, the CFSAC had appointed a separate group to meet and discuss a new name for the illness that our government insists upon calling the trivializing name of “chronic fatigue syndrome”. The newly appointed Chairman David Bell refused to hear the results of that committee’s work or have any further discussions on it! He remained chairman for two years.

David Bell has admitted to many that it was not only his sister who had a very severe case of CFIDS but he had the illness as well! Yet, even after he “retired” from practice, he didn’t really retire. He just joined another medical professional who had previously worked for our federal government, Asaf Durakovic, M.D., Ph.D., DSc, who is the Medical Research Director for the Uranium Medical Research Center based in Toronto, Canada Dr. Durakovic has written and published many papers on radiation including one that mentions CFIDS/ME. Yet, in a “presentation event” at the OMF, none of this was mentioned including the Lakeville Medical Office in Waterport, NY (which is a mere eight miles from Lyndonville where Bell lived and had practiced) where David Bell and Asaf Durakovic saw patients with irradiation at the time Bell was appointed chairman of the CFSAC!

The OMF says they are dedicated to their “End ME/CFS Project” where they are looking at biomarkers to help stop the illness. Unfortunately, that is not a possibility for irradiation and addressing biomarkers will not help stop the cause of radiation poisoning. David Bell was on the board of the IACFS/ME but if he shared his information on radiation, that group did not mention it. To make sure that the OMF was aware of what they were announcing, our medical director wrote an email to the head of their foundation:

“October 20, 2016

Dear Ms. Linda Tannenbaum,

In a video on your website, Dr. David Bell Joins OMF Scientific Advisory Board, Bell states that the “politics of the illness have always escaped me.”

Dr. Bell knows full well the relationship between radiation exposure and the development of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, yet chooses never to go there.
A brief synopsis of this can be seen at the following web location by the National CFIDS Foundation Inc:

www.ncf-net.org/forum/2012fall3.htm

Even Dr. Bell’s son is involved in this effort:

http://umrc.net/about-umrc/board-and-staff

As such, I highly recommend that you please forward this to Dr. Ronald Davis and other members of your staff for their perusal.

It is only in the true acknowledgement of ALL the available science that those suffering with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome will get the answers and medical treatment that each one deserves.

Sincerely,
Alan Cocchetto
Medical Director, National CFIDS Foundation Inc. and Associate Professor, SUNY"

Here is Linda’s email response to Professor Cocchetto:

“Dear Dr. Cocchetto,
Indeed I have done so, thank you for forwarding.
All things considered. We are all in this for a cure.
Warmly

Linda

Linda Tannenbaum
CEO/President
Open Medicine Foundation (OMF)”

If she really has “all things considered”, wouldn’t she understand there is no “cure” and her foundation’s title of their “End ME/CFS Project” is an impossibility? Why wouldn’t she be more interested in what actually can be done to help the patient? Will David Bell tell her how he improved since he, too, contracted CFIDS/ME? Ms. Tannenbaum claims she suffered with this for years and finally got well yet there has been no proof, anywhere, of any patient who has CFIDS/ME getting “well”.
Just before Thanksgiving, Ms. Tannenbaum sent this out via email:

“As Thanksgiving approaches, I’m reflecting on what I’m most thankful for.

10 years ago I was abruptly introduced to the ME/CFS community by the sudden onset in my 16 year old daughter. After countless doctor appointments, emergency room visits and trips to specialists, we received the life-changing diagnosis. As I have learned, this diagnosis effects everyone in the patients’ life.”

Why, I wondered, would her story now change to her daughter being the victim of CFIDS/ME? To be perfectly honest, I had spent years taking my teenaged daughter to physicians for a diagnosis until her pediatrician finally gave her a referral to Harvard University Medical School’s Director of Medicine who, after merely talking with her for 10 minutes, told me he knew exactly what she had although it would take weeks to prove it and he diagnosed her with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. About 10 years later, Dr. Bell moved to Massachusetts for a few years and I brought my daughter to see him. He began by questioning me and diagnosing me after telling me he had never seen a child correctly diagnosed nor had he ever diagnosed a child with CFIDS/ME without finding at least one parent with the illness and told me I had had the illness since I was a very young child. However, he never included that information in any of his books or writings. Following this paragraph is a letter taken from the internet by Dr. Durakovic. Of particular interest is the listing of his board, medical consultants and research associates listed on his stationary. The letter is answering a woman who wrote, “Please. Ban Veterans from Organ Donation lists.”

(See letter below)

The NCF is interested in the truth about this illness, such as the following quote taken from the Post Intelligencer on radiation: “The long term effects, as Dr Asaf Durakovic elaborates, after the early neurological symptoms are cancer, and related radiation illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome, joint and muscle pain, neurological and/or nerve damage, mood disturbances, auto-immune deficiencies, lung and kidney damage, vision problems, skin rupture, increase in miscarriages, maternal mortality and genetic birth defects/deformation.”