I returned several days ago from a meeting of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Advisory Committee in Washington, D.C., something I swore for years I would NEVER do--not even, I once told someone who urged me to make my voice heard, if the committee set a helicopter down on my lawn to fetch me.
Well, now I've attended one of these two-day conclaves, and not by helicopter but by riding Amtrak to and fro over the bumpy rails that line the Eastern Seaboard. I find that I am still trying to assimilate the event, which certainly was unique from all the meetings that preceded it yet had, I suspect, a lot of familiar elements, too.
Those familiar elements included airport-style security, a panel of seemingly heartless bureaucrats, a Kleenex box discreetly placed on the otherwise Spartan table where members of the public sat to deliver testimony, and a fleet of uniformed Public Health Service employees standing at the ready to escort civilians to the bathroom. The sanctity and safety of the Hubert H. Humphrey Building must be maintained. Nevermind the civilian safety that’s been jeopardized in some part by this committee’s history of listlessness. But more on that in a minute.
Is there another standing committee on Capitol Hill where Kleenex is nearly as essential as microphones for those who testify before it?
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