September eighteen
The Honorable Bill Young
2407 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5961 (202) 225-9764 (fax)
9210 113th Street
Seminole, FL 33772
(727) 394-6950 (727) 394-6955 (fax)
Bill.Young@mail.house.gov
Dear Mr. Young:
Three times in the past eight years I have asked members of your staff if we could meet. They all asked, “What about.” I would tell them and never hear back again. This time I am trying email.
The issue is that I am a diagnostic radiologist in Pinellas County. Sometimes I participate in the workup of women for infertility. Generally these women are disappointed to find nothing directly treatable. Anatomically and chemically they are perfectly normal. This is very common indeed these days, and I am sure I need not stress how important it is to my patients, to Florida and to the United States.
What I have found is that the problem is genetic. I do not mean abnormal genes. I mean perfectly normal genes that are in a disadvantageous combination with other normal genes. (It actually appears that the effect is at the chromosome level; I mean genes in the most general possible way.)
I have developed a computer program in C language that demonstrates this effect. I have found a study of more than a thousand animals that shows the same genetic effect as my computer program. I have found two studies in human populations showing the same thing. I have found the effect on the history of humans any number of times. Of course there is a mass of supporting circumstantial evidence. In short the effect is above question.
I have communicated with fertility doctors and a large number of scientists. Not one has found any problem with my evidence. I have had reactions of, “Interesting” and “Makes sense.” But that is rare. Usually I get no response at all, just as I have so far had no response from your office. Their lack of interest baffles me. I understand excuses like “no time” and “not my field” but it seems to me that the importance of the issue should override any such consideration. (Since your staff has participated, maybe you are in a better position to find out than I am.)
It is possible that their problem is that there is no funding, and there is no funding because the issue is not widely known. Although the science already on the shelf would be an enormous help to people if it were known, there remains some research that ought to be done. It would cost some money, but not nearly as much as a shuttle launch, determining and annotating the genome of the house cat and any number of other projects. The difference is that infertility is a problem that has women crying themselves to sleep every night all over the state and the nation and abroad. It must take a heart of stone to ignore them.
There is an organizational issue. Genetics is the responsibility of the NIH and fertility is the responsibility of the CDC. This can be fixed by a top down directive, “Get together and get to the bottom of this.”
I will send a DVD that gives in 10 minutes a summary of my best evidence with the references documented (along with a copy of this letter). I can outline the research that is needed easily, but it will not make much sense until you have seen the DVD or spent a long time looking at nobabies.net where I am posting data and my efforts to get this addressed.
Please look at the DVD and get in touch with me so we can figure out a way forward. I shall be posting this letter on the internet. Sooner or later the truth is going to find its way out, and if that happens and we have taken no action, both of us are going to look very bad.
Sincerely,
M. Linton Herbert MD
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Note: Yesterday, (September 25, 2009), I got a call from Congressman Young's office. I am invited to send messages through them to the NIH and CDC. Of course I am overjoyed. So far as I can remember, with a single exception this is more help than I have received in ten years combined.