The first time I walked up to the Palo Alto home of the legendary scientist Ron Davis, PhD, it was with a heavy heart. It was early evening in the winter of 2016 and, in the fading daylight, strings of white lights hung across the wide green front lawn lit up. A hopeful sign I thought -- but I really just wanted to get back in my car and drive away. Instead, I gripped a reporter's notepad in my right hand, and slowly crossed the porch to the stately front door. A handwritten note taped there said: "Please do not knock or ring bell before 3 p.m. Call or text. Very sick person." I paused, looked ..read more

For years, chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), has been undetectable by traditional tests that check the function of major organs or examine blood and immune cell counts. For these very sick patients, test results often come back normal, giving doctors few clues on how to proceed. But now, patients with the devastating disease -- which causes debilitating fatigue, flu-like symptoms and something called post-exertional malaise, a condition that causes any symptoms to worsen after exerting even small amounts of effort -- may find v ..read more