The Secretary of Health and Human Services
January 11, 2002

To:
The Honorable Rodney P. Frelinghuysen
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515-2106

Dear Mr. Frelinghuysen:

Thank you for your letter on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), in which you asked me to consider allocating $10 million to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for CFS research and chartering a Federal Advisory Committee on CFS, on behalf of a group of your constituents living with CFS.

I share your concern about the serious health problems of the more than 800,000 Americans with CFS, including a number of your constituents. CFS is a complex and debilitating disorder for which no cause or cure is yet known. Nevertheless, while we do not fully understand the mechanisms which underlie CFS, important advances have been made in the last decade to better understand aspects of this disorder. Many of these advances have been supported by this Department.

Regarding your request that $10 million be allocated to NIH for CFS research using the recommendations developed at the State of the Science Conference that the Department convened in October 2000, NIH is currently developing a Program Announcement (PA) based on the recommendations. That PA will request research proposals that focus on multisystemic factors and encourage multidisciplinary collaborative CFS research efforts. The funding level of this PA will be based largely on the quality of the research proposals submitted in response to the request.

Concerning your suggestion that we charter a Federal Advisory Committee on CFS, the Department recently carried out a complete review of its Advisory Committees and determined that we will, in the near future, transform the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Coordinating Committee, established in 1996, to a fully structured Advisory Committee in much the same way other Advisory Committees are structured. We expect to have completed the requisite process soon.

I appreciate your recommendations and will take them into consideration as we go forward. Please call me if you have any further thoughts or questions.

Sincerely,
Tommy G. Thompson