Dear World,

Today is my friend Tommy's 21st birthday. I've known Tommy since middle school and he's always been such a bright light in my life. He's an amazingly wonderful, selfless, and inspiring individual, and just such a joy to be friends with. I have so many wonderful memories of classes and clubs together, and how he could always make us laugh. However, due to his struggle with ME/CFS, he is unable to continue his career at Stanford and, in the chance he doesn't recover, will "never be able to complete my degree, hold a job, or get married and have kids." Please pray for his health and recovery, and if you are able, to donate to the cause and/or forward his fundraising letter to someone who might have the means.

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(this letter may be made public for fundraising purposes)

I am writing with regards to Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). With ME/CFS, healthy people get infected with a virus which infects the CNS. These people are left extremely ill, often bedridden, and most will remain ill for the rest of their lives. There is no treatment or cure for ME/CFS. This disease affects > 1 million Americans.

A year ago, I was a sophomore at Stanford studying computer science. Things were going great. I had a 4.0 GPA and summer job offers from Facebook and Dropbox. I was also in extremely good shape. I had run varsity track in high school and once set a school record by doing 29 pull ups. My medical history was a clean slate. As you can guess this story goes, I got infected with a virus which infected my nervous system. I became very ill with ME/CFS and am now too weak to walk more than 100 feet or work for more than several minutes in a day. I will most likely never recover, in which case I will never be able to complete my degree, hold a job, or get married and have kids. Only 15% of patients will recover.

There is hope. Researchers have made significant progress in the last year towards better understanding this disease. A dream team of researchers at Stanford has assembled to tackle this disease. These researchers have access to state of the art equipment and can measure the levels of thousands of genes expressed in the body, track thousands of proteins, and pick up even the tiniest amounts of viral DNA. Most promisingly, they have identified 2 experimental drugs, one which fights viruses and another which modifies the immune system which works in about 2/3rds of ME/CFS patients. Everything is in place for us to tackle this disease in the next several years except one thing: funding.

The funding situation for ME/CFS is embarrassingly poor. Most serious diseases receive hundreds or thousands of dollars in research funding per patient per year. HIV/AIDS is another disease which is caused by a virus, has a poor prognosis and affects the same number of patients as ME/CFS. AIDS research gets $3 billion in funding per year, or about $2000 per patient. With ME/CFS, the figure is $5 million per year for a mere <$5.00 per patient. For a disease which affects >1 million Americans and has an annual economic impact of $26 billion, this funding situation is inadequate.

Our goal is to raise $100 million dollars in private funding for ME/CFS research. This will allow us to understand the details of the disease, and run larger clinical trials to prove these experimental drugs are effective. We expect this level of funding will allow us to cure many cases of ME/CFS in the next several years, getting a million Americans back to work. With an economic impact of $26 billion, this is a better return on investment than received by the early investors in Facebook.

To make a donation, please visit:
http://med.stanford.edu/sgtc/donation.html

Sincerely,
Tom Camenzind

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This just breaks my heart.