Medicine: Stalking A Shadowy Assailant

The Government tries to find the cause of a devastating fatigue

The symptoms are bad enough: sluggishness, sore muscles, fever, headaches and depression. But on top of all that, people who suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome often have to endure accusations of hypochondria. Now, years after the mysterious CFS gained notoriety as the "yuppie disease," the U.S. Government is finally starting to take it seriously. The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, which has been receiving about 1,000 calls a month from people who claim to be CFS victims, or from their relatives or doctors, has launched a $1 million "surveillance program" in which 350 physicians will study CFS patients in Reno,...

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