Feel free to download and reformat the following into a two-sided handout, as long as the full attribution at the bottom of the page is included. Early CDC press releases indicated that 90 percent of patients were upper middle class high achieving white women, and the CDC still insists that the disease is primarily female and white. This myth has now been put to rest by three demographic studies published in refereed journal articles. If anything, it hits the poor and people of color slightly harder. A quick check with demographic researchers this week found no consensus at all on duration - except that the CDC's was the most optimistic.
Many patients have the disease, recover within two or three years, and then relapse years later.
Dr. David Bell, who had earlier reported in research that 50 percent would improve to the 80 percent level, found to his dismay that the patients had overestimated their own progress in the forms they had filled out over the years. No one knows. No one knows. Probably as a result of the inability of the deformed RnaseL to function properly, the body produces far too much of it. Hence, viruses that would normally have been defeated long ago are still capable of causing trouble.