"Ms. Johnson’s book describes an important piece of recent medical history that might never have been recorded if it weren’t for her efforts. Her carefully researched tale leaves us pondering the progress of medicine."
"Ms. Johnson’s book describes an important piece of recent medical history that might never have been recorded if it weren’t for her efforts. Her carefully researched tale leaves us pondering the progress of medicine."
"A relentless, meticulous, and highly persuasive exposé by a journalist who spent nine years investigating the medical research establishment's failure to take seriously chronic fatigue syndrome.
"[Johnson’s] sympathies lie with the victims of the syndrome, with the grass roots internists... and with the relatively few scientists brave enough to run counter to the prevailing nihilism."
"Osler’s Web is a major documentary account of this strange and still unsolved mystery, marked by human tragedy and quite obvious government shortcomings."
Journalist Hillary Johnson has written about medical topics for three decades. She has explored the introduction of anti-retroviral “cocktails” in AIDS; the use of depleted uranium weapons by the U.S. in the Gulf wars; public health threats posed by the ever-mutating influenza virus; viral causes of multiple sclerosis; air pollution-induced mortality; and health effects of the notorious toxic waste site Love Canal. Her most in-depth reporting has been about U.S. biomedical research gone awry in the case of myalgic encephalomyelitis, a.k.a. “chronic fatigue syndrome.” Her science reporting has been published in Rolling Stone, where she was a contributing editor for a decade, Mirabella, Life, Self, the New York Times, Working Woman, Discover and more.
Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Robert Wallace assigned Johnson to write about the M.E. epidemic in the summer of 1987. The result, a two-part series called “Journey Into Fear,” was the topic of an ABC Nightline segment soon after it's publication. The series was a finalist in the prestigious “reporting” category at the National Magazine Awards of 1988.