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About 10 years ago, Stanford University genomicist Ronald W. Davis began a new investigation into a mysterious disease that had disabled his son, Whitney Dafoe. A photographer and avid traveller in his 20s, Dafoe could no longer care for himself. He slowly lost the ability to eat and eventually even to speak. He visited doctors for years before he finally found one who could diagnose him with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) based on his strange constellation of symptoms. But with the diagnosis, Dafoe and his family soon learned that little research had been done on the disease, and there was no treatment. Davis decided to do what he could to fill that gap.
Davis’s first step was to set up a centrifuge in the tool shed in his backyard. When he got home from his job as director of the Stanford Genome Technology Center, he’d ...
