Dear Friends,
My husband Don and I left California on May 28 to embark for Europe again on our second annual OMF End ME / CFS Worldwide Tour, to discuss research, bring updates, share hope, ideas, and raise awareness. Being parents of a sick daughter, we are well aware of how important hope is for all of you with ME / CFS!
Our first stop was London, BRMEC8 and IIMEC13, and we were honored to be joined by six of our Scientific Advisory Board members. We were especially excited to have Dr. Ronald Tompkins there as well, since he will be leading our newly funded ME / CFS Collaborate Research Center at Harvard under the direction of Dr. Ron Davis.
There were about 20 countries represented at IIMEC13 and 14 at the science meetings. OMF had a table on the community day and Drs. Ron Davis, Ron Tompkins and Wenzhong Xiao joined me to meet and greet attendees. It was so wonderful to meet with old and new friends; it definitely feels like a reunion each time. There were friends from Italy and the Netherlands with which I will meet again soon, and some other countries approached me already to invite me for a next year tour visit. I felt deeply honored and humbled by these invitations.
We had very productive scientific meetings at BRMEC. On Friday June 1st (IIMEC13) Dr. Davis presented “Revolutionizing biomedical research through technology development”. In his talk Dr. Davis shared new very exciting information from the Severely ill Patient Study (SIPS) that will hopefully help the entire ME / CFS field and all patients. ”If this is the case we should be able to push the patients out of this state by a specific metabolic intervention. We are very hopeful that this could be a one time treatment, take only a few days, and be relatively inexpensive.”
Invest in ME again provide a wonderful platform for the latest and most promising biomedical research into ME / CFS. Carol Head (Solve ME / CFS Initiative) gave a great talk at the preconference dinner meeting about the status of ME / CFS in the USA.
Beth Unger, Maureen Hanson & Dan Peterson; Wenzhong Xiao, Ron Tompkins & Ron Davis
I truly feel blessed, not only being able to be here with our inspirational delegation and so many other brilliant scientists from around the world, but especially to connect and share time with patients and caregivers. Thank you all for your wonderful comments and feelings; many approached me that we are really giving them hope for the first time. This love of the ME / CFS community inspires us every day to find answers soon.
As Margaret Mead says: “A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” And as we collaborate and share hope, anything is possible!
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