M.E. Archive

Book Examines Mystery Disease

"A non-fiction book to be published today about chronic fatigue syndrome will relive an episode many Incline Village residents have tried to forget." Incline Village's local newspaper, the Tahoe Bonanza, addressed the publication of Osler's Web

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Behind the Puzzle of Chronic Fatigue

"The story told in Osler’s Web: Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Epidemic, began a dozen years ago as a series of unconnected reports from widely scattered places about a malady that was leaving its victims painfully exhausted and their doctors." Michael Kinney reviews Osler's Web for the Boston Globe

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Wading Through a Web of Mishap and Misconception

"Any physician daring to look in the mirror should take a stroll through Osler’s Web. It should remind them of the old familiar adage, 'Physician, heal thyself.'"

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Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Might Be Contagious; Book Blasts Officials for Ignoring Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

“…A disturbing new book says chronic fatigue syndrome is not a psychosomatic illness but a legitimate disease which affects more than 2 million Americans and actually may be contagious…”

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Chronic Devastation

“Does that mean you’re a lazy ass?” a friend asked...The question revealed not just a popular conception but a failure of public health policy.

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Feeling Rotten: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome on the Medical Map, but Less than an Established Disease

"Her carefully researched tale leaves us pondering the progress of medicine."

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Sleuthing Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Can Doctors Keep an Open Mind in the Labyrinth of Social-Political Diseases?

"Osler’s Web reminds us that disease, perplexing enough as a physiological phenomenon, cannot be fully understood except in specific social and political contexts"

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Annals of the Yuppie Flu

Imogen Evans, excutive editor of the Lancet: "That X or Y or Z cannot be shown to be abnormal does not deny the existence of chronic fatigue syndrome."

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Medical Malfeasance

"…(Johnson’s) sympathies lie with the victims, with the grass-roots internists...and relatively few scientists brave enough to run counter to the prevailing nihilism."

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Chronic Fatigue and a Conspiracy Theory

"An investigative reporter once told me the world is divided into two groups of people: those who believe in conspiracies and those who don’t."

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What If They Found a Disease and Nobody Cared?

"'Osler’s Web' is a major documentary account of this strange and still unsolved mystery, marked by human tragedy and quite obvious government shortcomings"

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Publishers Weekly Review

"Johnson’s groundbreaking, compelling report does for (ME) what Randy Shilts’ And the Band Played On did for the AIDS epidemic"

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Kirkus Reviews

"A relentless, meticulous and highly persuasive expose by a journalist who spent nine years investigating the medical research establishment’s failure to take seriously 'CFS'"

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Natural Born Killers: Journalist Hillary Johnson Investigates Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Nine years in the making, Osler’s Web is journalist Hillary Johnson’s opus about the murky origins and alleged government mismanagement of the much maligned Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS).

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A Controversial Epidemic: Turf Battles and Skepticism Exhaust the Debate over Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

The debate surrounding Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) has been rekindled across North America, spurred on by the recent publication of Osler’s Web: Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic by Hillary Johnson.

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The Contagious Cover-Up

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A Chronic Fatigue Cover-Up?

The patient, a normally vigorous 36-year-old, shows up in her doctor’s office looking ashen and frail. Her throat hurts, her head and muscles ache and for several months she has often felt too weak to stand up in the shower.

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Osler's Web in The Daily Breeze

In 1989 Hillary Johnson had 900 manuscript pages and a deal with Macmillan to publish a book about chronic fatigue syndrome. Then Macmillan canceled her contract and published another book very different from the one Johnson had proposed.

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Prodigy Online Interview

The Internet was in its infancy when Osler’s Web was published. Johnson had never used it until she was on her book tour. Seated before a keyboard in the claustrophobic stock room of a Berkeley, California bookstore, she responded to questions posed by members of a large Southern California support group in real time. The interaction shines a light on patient concerns circa 1996. What’s interesting is how little these concerns have changed.

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The Next Epidemic

"Chronic Fatigue Syndrome may afflict two million Americans—so does the government say it’s all in women’s heads?" Elle magazine published this Q & A with Johnson in March 1996.

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A Chronic Fatigue Epic: Journalist-sufferer writes saga for Crown

Publisher's Weekly featured Osler's Web in its December 4, 1995 issue, noting that the "story behind Osler's Web is itself a web."

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A Case of Chronic Denial

In 2009, the New York Times invited Johnson to write an op-ed about XMRV. Assigned at 750 words, the story doubled in length as editors peppered Johnson with questions.

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The Invisible Epidemic

"Chronic fatigue syndrome is a debilitating disease diagnosed far more often in women. Why is it being ignored?" Johnson's prescient 1994 article for Working Woman magazine.

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Bad Medicine

This Q & A with the Osler's Web author appeared in Minnesota Monthly soon after the book was published in the spring of 1996.

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Chasing the Shadow Virus: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and XMRV

How the federal government responded to news that ME might be caused by a specific virus--XMRV--by Hillary Johnson for Discover magazine in 2013.

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