In this inspirational conversation, CEO of Emerge Australia Anne Wilson, talks with international ME/CFS luminary Professor Anthony Komaroff, who so generously reflects on far-ranging ME/CFS global matters – from the early pivotal Australian Dubbo Study to the recent seminal Frontiers of Medicine roadmap to the evidence article; from Graded Exercise Therapy to lessons we have learned to help find a cure to end suffering for those with ME/CFS across the world. Join us in this enlightening exchange!
Professor Anthony L Komaroff MD, is an Internal Medicine physician and a foremost expert in ME/CFS since the late 1980s. As of 1993, he has been a professor at Harvard Medical School in the United States, holding the title of the Steven P Simcox, Patrick A Clifford and James H Higby Distinguished Professor of Medicine. Dr Komaroff serves on the team for the Centre for Solutions for ME/CFS at Columbia University, a Collaborative Research Centre partially funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Widely awarded and published, Dr Komaroff has been a practicing primary care physician for 45 years and editor in chief for 18 years of Harvard Health Publications, the division of Harvard Medical School responsible for consumer health publications (newsletters, books, newspaper columns, magazine content, and Internet publications). From 1982-1997, he was Director of the Division of General Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a Harvard-affiliated hospital in Boston. He was the founding Editor of NEJM Journal Watch, a publication of the New England Journal of Medicine Group and from 2011-2017 and authored a syndicated newspaper column called ‘Ask Doctor K’ published daily in about 450 newspapers in North America. He teaches clinical medicine and health policy and conducts research, with a current focus on ME/CFS and on human herpesvirus 6.
He has been famously quoted in a Rolling Stone article in 1987, written by Hillary Johnson, stating that he did not agree that ME/CFS was a ‘yuppie disease’, which became the derogatory label commonly used later, ‘Yuppie Flu’ and he is notable featured in Ryan Prior’s documentary, Forgotten Plague.
