- Hardcover: 720 pages
- Publisher: Crown; 1 edition (Mar 12 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 051770353X
- ISBN-13: 978-0517703533
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.7 x 4.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 Kg
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #426,502 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
By bringing chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) out of the shadows and squarely onto the nation's health agenda, Johnson's groundbreaking, compelling report does for it what Randy Shilts's And the Band Played On did for the AIDS epidemic. Once derisively dismissed as "yuppie flu," CFS was recognized as a legitimate, cohesive disease entity by the Centers for Disease Control only in 1990, six years after the first mass outbreaks. An infectious immune disorder that affects millions worldwide (the exact pathogen is unknown), CFS causes debilitating exhaustion, severe aching and headaches and fever, and in many cases affects the brain, causing memory and cognitive impairment, seizures and brain lesions. Freelance journalist Johnson (herself a CFS sufferer in the mid-1980s) interviewed hundreds of patients, scientists, doctors and government officials. Writing with quiet fury, she builds a devastating picture of the U.S. government research establishment's decade-long strategy of avoidance and denial. Her epic-length report draws chilling parallels between CFS and AIDS: desperate CFS patients organize support groups, underground clinics, activist coalitions; trials of Ampligen, a promising drug, are halted by the FDA; patients lose medical insurance simply for being diagnosed with CFS-a policy that continues to the present among major carriers. Author tour. (Mar.) FYI: The title refers to Canadian physician Sir William Osler (1849-1919), who exhorted his medical students to be on guard against lockstep thinking. See Book News (Dec. 4) for the story behind the book.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
This oddly titled book contains a vast amount of material on a questionable disease that swept across the country during the past decade. Johnson draws on many interviews and professional meetings to document clinical and research work on chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), and she knows well the medical and popular literature on and the media's dealings with her passionately disputed topic. Incline Village, Nevada, physicians Paul Cheney and Dan Peterson first identified CFS and treated hundreds of patients. Johnson documents the sneering opposition of both the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health to recognizing CFS as a genuine disease, the hands-off attitude toward it of several leading medical journals, and the obloquy many physicians heaped on it. Neither Cheney, Peterson, nor any other clinician or researcher could ever absolutely identify the cause of the syndrome, and many in the opposition firmly believed it to be a product of psychiatric disturbances. Johnson's exhaustive volume is a benchmark in the strange history of an even stranger illness. William Beatty
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gripping Tale of Human Nature,
By
This review is from: Oslers Web (Paperback)
My sister gave me this book because I was wondering if I have CFS. In the early pages, the symptoms are described and it became clear that I do not have CFS. So did I stop reading? I couldn't! What a gripping, pell-mell story, unfolding like a psychological thriller---one contributing scene unveiled at a time, in chronological order, with me on the edge of my seat, turning page after page! What fascinates me most in life is human nature, especially how we deal with minority opinions in our culture. It takes a very secure person to open up to new ideas that might shake our perceptual foundations---the entire grid of assumptions on which we base our approach to daily life. You know that old saying, "Don't move my water dish!" Osler's Web is about a developing story that the majority does not want to hear or believe. This sociological majority/minority dynamic that Johnson describes so meticulously in this book, I have seen acted out in a tiny non-profit volunteer organization. I've seen it in religious communities, even in families. Heresy. Orthodoxy. Whose voice gets heard. Whose does not. How we treat the "heretic." What motivates people to say their truth, to keep trying to get heard, once they've been shouted down and trivialized, marginalized or even demonized for saying something that nobody wants to hear? I'm not thrilled with the human minority/majority dynamic, but it is ubiquitous. This book would be useful to anybody who feels obliged in any context to say that the emporer has no clothes. This also is the most gripping drama I have read in years. Highly recommended!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent review of this perplexing and important disease,
By A Customer
This review is from: Oslers Web (Paperback)
Hillary Johnson does a masterful job of documenting the illness and its history at a level understandable by the lay public, yet it is detailed enough to satisfy the medical audience. This book is a meticulously researched and exposes some of the worst science has to offer and the best in patients and medical researchers. As an epidemiologist, I knew little about CFIDS before reading this book. After reading it, I am truly amazed (yet again) at how politics can corrupt and intrude into the scientific process. I highly recommend this book!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Osler's Web A Good Portrayal,
By A Customer
This review is from: Osler's Web: Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic (Hardcover)
I found Osler's Web to be a good, well-written portrayal of thedisease. I'm a YPWC - Young person with CFIDS, and to lend the book to people to help them understand my illness has helped a lot CFIDS is too unknown - thanks for helping us fight against ignorance, Hillary! The only thing I want to comment on - We don't know if it is a contagious disease. And to say it is, makes some people stay away from us instead of supporting us. Yes, there have been some outbreaks, but it has not been scientifically proven to be contagious!
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