Delay in Release of Study on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Prompts an Outcry

From the New York Times, 14 July 2010 (Story by David Tuller)

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, citing a need to re-evaluate their data, have delayed publication of a new study believed to provide evidence of a link between chronic fatigue syndrome and a little-known retrovirus.

The study, already peer-reviewed, was supposed to appear in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The delay has sparked an outcry on blogs and social networking sites among chronic fatigue patients, who are desperate for answers about their debilitating illness and fear that important scientific data are being suppressed.

“A cabal of top government administrators” with a habit of “heavy-handed, anti-science manipulation of peer-reviewed science” ordered the delay, Hillary Johnson, author of a book about the history of chronic fatigue syndrome