It was late afternoon on a glorious day in October. My friend Natasha and I were picking our way down a country lane, toward the train station in a village about an hour from Moscow’s Kievsky train station. Our close friends, a lesbian couple, owned a dacha in the village, a cozy cottage where a group of us gathered often to escape the city.
Years ago, I never thought to myself, ‘Hey, I’ve gotta be the guy who writes about chronic fatigue syndrome.’ I mean, why would I? It just sort of happened. When research suggested in 2010 that the illness might be linked to a mouse retrovirus, I wrote a piece about it for The New York Times.
After that I wrote another story, and then more stories, and then a few more—probably a dozen or so in all. But within a couple of years the mouse retrovirus hypothesis fell apart. And media interest in the illness vanished.
Posted on November 18, 2015 - 4:14pm
This week, the eyes of the world will turn to Sochi, the site of the upcoming Winter Olympics. The U.S. delegation, headed by former Secretary of Homeland Security and just-installed UC president Janet Napolitano, includes three out athletes—tennis legend Billie Jean King, ice hockey player Caitlin Cahow, and figure skater Brian Boitano, an Olympic gold medalist who only disclosed his sexual orientation publicly after President Obama tapped him as part of the group.
Posted on February 2, 2014 - 10:05pm
