Below is the full statement and call to action taken from MEandYou’s
website.
This is MEandYou
Do you want to be a part of making a medical breakthrough?
Do you want your families and friends to have an opportunity to be a part?
Invite them.
Millions of people suffer from the disease ME, but today
there are no medications to treat them. Scientists at Haukeland Hospital in
Bergen have found that a drug might make more of them healthy. It was so
startling that it made international headlines in BBC, Der Spiegel, and ABC
News. If the findings verified, thousands of patients worldwide have a
healthier life.
Scientists at Haukeland need only one study to be able to
find out if this is the breakthrough you have been waiting for. 140 ME
sufferers have to try out the medication in a research project. It cost 7
million. However, the public authorities have refused to grant money.
We are fundraising the cost for 140 ME-sufferers to
Haukeland Hospital, cancer ward, to be a part of a clinical trial on Rituxan.
The cost is 1,2 million USD, 55 000 Norwegian kroner each. We are going
to do it in 90 days.
The Rituxan study at Haukeland Hospital, presented in PlosOne autumn
2011, showed the most promising results worldwide for ME/CFS-sufferers.
2/3 had good or moderate effect. The bigger RCT-study has not had
sufficient economical support from the official health care system to continue their research.
ME/CFS is a poorly understood, but debilitating,
neuroimmunological illness with none or little treatment, that affects hundreds
of thousands of people world wide. Have you ever thought about how much society would save just by getting a few of those sufferers back to work and as
participants of the community?
What if it turns out that the research that you, as an individual, support will be a breakthrough in the medical field? What if you are one of
those people who in few years can say that, yes, I was a part of it! This might
be your chance. The patients, the families, the friends pass those
well-established channels and contribute funds directly to the research
projects we want to support, so that they become a reality. Do you want to be a
part of it?
We can do it. MEandYou.