Or "Wish I were a Bee"
The respected PBS science program "Nature" had a show tonight about a "mysterious syndrome" which costs the US economy $15B in annual productivity, called Colony Collapse Disorder. They’ve never done a show about the mysterious syndrome that costs as much as $25B called CFS.
There was a long list of possible culprits, most of which could not be proven:
malnutrition (not proven, though some bees had digestive abnormalities)
pesticide (but only some symptoms were present and it was also found among organic beekeepers/farmers who don’t use pesticides)
stress (how much stress could a bee possibly have?!)
cell phones (which turned out to be bad science)
mites (the scientists didn’t see what they should have seen)
parasite (but the parasite they found was present in all hives, not just the CCD ones)
an AIDS-like virus
Governments around the world dipped into emergency funds to pay for research. Penn State called in top researchers from every discipline, including Columbia University’s infectious disease lab. Contrast that to the short shrift given to CFS research. CFS affects people who will live 50 years with the disease, not honeybees that, under the best of circumstances, will live only 30 days total.
Researchers found a "whole array" of problems with the bees they studied, including the same fungi that develop in a human with a suppressed immune system (e.g., someone with CFS or AIDS).
In studying the DNA taken from affected bees, they found the Israeli Acute Paralytic Virus (gee, does the concept of an acute and paralytic virus ring any bells with my fellow CFS sufferers?) and PBS ended the program with the assurance that "scientists are now working to understand and cure the virus".
Meanwhile, a million CFS patients in the US alone are left to fend for themselves. No government in the history of CFS has used "emergency funds" to pay for research – the pittance assigned by our own government for CFS research has repeatedly been misused to research other diseases. After an audit revealed that, and the amount was ordered to be replaced in the CFS budget, it was found that the money was again diverted to other diseases that the researchers were more interested in.
Where are the "top researchers in every discipline" searching for a cure for the human disease that costs the country even more in productivity? While governments are spending their emergency funds on researching bees, most of the CFS research done in the US has been funded by the patients themselves. Thanks to a few who come from well-heeled families, there’s been research done that could not have been funded by the majority of patients who are unable to work but don’t receive any government Disability benefits, either, and therefore can’t even spare $1 to put toward the research that might get them back to work.
Maybe if we were cute and furry like the bees?
No comments:
Post a Comment