New York Native

1985:Throwing Down the Gauntlet

By: Charles Ortleb

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

This is the second chapter of The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-up, Charles Ortleb's riveting history of the HHV-6, AIDS, and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemics. Ortleb was the publisher and editor-in-chief of New York Native, the amazing newspaper that broke the biggest medical stories of the 20th century. Nobody in the world has done more than Ortleb to sound the alarm about all the diseases linked to HHV-6.
In the second chapter of The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-up, Charles Ortleb writes about the work of Ann Fettner, a reporter who wrote several major investigative pieces for New York Native. Fettner reported on an outbreak of Multiple Sclerosis in nurses who worked in a hospital in Key West, Florida. The cases raised the possibility that some agent associated with AIDS might also be causing Multiple Sclerosis. That agent turned out to be HHV-6, a virus that New York Native subsequently reported on more than any other publication in the world. In this chapter, Ortleb also discusses his relationship with Jim Monroe, someone who acted as New York Native's "Deep Throat" at the CDC. Monroe informed Ortleb about the manner in which the CDC was manipulating the way that AIDS blood tests were conducted. Monroe also advised Ortleb that all major decisions about AIDS were being made by Reagan's White House, suggesting that the science of AIDS was being politically shaped. In this chapter Ortleb also describes the beginning of his newspaper's campaign to wake the world up to the fraud coming out of the laboratory of top AIDS scientist Robert Gallo.
"A rollicking, fascinating and important memoir.” —Hillary Johnson, author of Osler's Web, Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic