New York Native

1986: A New Virus or a Renamed Old One?

By: Charles Ortleb

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

This is the third 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 this chapter, the battle about the nature of the AIDS epidemic becomes more contentious and critics begin to be censored, silenced, and stigmatized. Texas begins considering a quarantine for people with AIDS. Scientist Jane Teas suggests that HIV, the so-called cause of AIDS, might in fact be an endogenous retrovirus--an effect rather than the cause of AIDS. Teas and Beldekas test AIDS patients for African Swine Fever virus and a number are positive. When Ortleb reads an article by celebrity Ben Stein in an L.A. newspaper about a chronic illness breaking out in everyone he knows in Los Angeles and New York, he suggests that this might be the manifestation of the AIDS epidemic in the general population. It is the beginning of Ortleb's argument that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and AIDS are just different faces of the same basic epidemic. In one of the most important articles ever published in New York Native, reporter Ann Fettner interviews an employee working on AIDS in Florida for the Centers for Disease Control. The man, Gus Sermos, insists that the CDC is falsifying important data about the epidemic in Florida that would have changed our understanding of AIDS and its risk groups. When Robert Gallo's lab announces the discovery of a new DNA virus (eventually called HHV-6) the New York Native points out that Gallo's so-called discovery resembles African Swine Fever virus, the agent Teas and Beldekas had found evidence for in AIDS patients. Given that Gallo's lab is increasingly being accused of stealing credit for HIV, the Native suggests that the Gallo lab may have done the same thing with there DNA virus. That fact that the new virus is found in both AIDS patients and people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome strengthens Ortleb's argument that CFS and AIDS are part of the same epidemic.
"A rollicking, fascinating and important memoir.” —Hillary Johnson, author of Osler's Web, Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic