Information is not generally available about this agent because, first of all, the mycoplasma is such a minutely small disease agent. A hundred years ago, certain medical theoreticians conceived that there must be a form of disease agent smaller than bacteria and viruses. This pathogenic organism, the mycoplasma, is so minute that normal blood and tissue tests will not reveal its presence as the source of the disease.

Your doctor may diagnose you with Alzheimer's disease, and he will say: "Golly, we don't know where Alzheimer's comes from. All we know is that your brain begins to deteriorate, cells rupture, the myelin sheath around the nerves dissolves, and so on." Or if you have chronic fatigue syndrome, the doctor will not be able to find any cause for your illness with ordinary blood and tissue tests.

This mycoplasma couldn't be detected until about 30 years ago when the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test was developed, in which a sample of your blood is examined and damaged particles are removed and subjected to a polymerase chain reaction. This causes the DNA in the particles to break down. The particles are then placed in a nutrient, which causes the DNA to grow back into its original form. If enough of the substance is produced, the form can be recognised, so it can be determined whether Brucella or another kind of agent is behind that particular mycoplasma.

If you or anybody in your family has myalgic encephalomyelitis, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis or Alzheimer's, you can send a blood sample to Dr Les Simpson in New Zealand for testing.

If you are ill with these diseases, your red blood cells will not be normal doughnut-shaped blood cells capable of being compressed and squeezed through the capillaries, but will swell up like cherry-filled doughnuts which cannot be compressed. The blood cells become enlarged and distended because the only way the mycoplasma can exist is by uptaking pre-formed sterols from the host cell. One of the best sources of pre-formed sterols is cholesterol, and cholesterol is what gives your blood cells flexibility. If the cholesterol is taken out by the mycoplasma, the red blood cell swells up and doesn't go through, and the person begins to feel all the aches and pains and all the damage it causes to the brain, the heart, the stomach, the feet and the whole body because blood and oxygen are cut off.

And that is why people with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome have such a terrible time. When the blood is cut off from the brain, punctate lesions appear because those parts of the brain die. The mycoplasma will get into portions of the heart muscle, especially the left ventricle, and those cells will die. Certain people have cells in the lateral ventricles of the brain that have a genetic predisposition to admit the mycoplasma, and this causes the lateral ventricles to deteriorate and die. This leads to multiple sclerosis, which will progress until these people are totally disabled; frequently, they die prematurely. The mycoplasma will get into the lower bowel, parts of which will die, thus causing colitis. All of these diseases are caused by the degenerating properties of the mycoplasma.

In early 2000, a gentleman in Sudbury phoned me and told me he had fibromyalgia. He applied for a pension and was turned down because his doctor said it was all in his head and there was no external evidence. I gave him the proper form and a vial, and he sent his blood to Dr Simpson to be tested. He did this with his family doctor's approval, and the results from Dr Simpson showed that only 4% of his red blood cells were functioning normally and carrying the appropriate amount of oxygen to his poor body, whereas 83% were distended, enlarged and hardened, and wouldn't go through the capillaries without an awful lot of pressure and trouble. This is the physical evidence of the damage that is done.

You can also ask your doctor to give you a 24-hour Holter ECG. You know, of course, that an electrocardiogram is a measure of your heartbeat and shows what is going on in the right ventricle, the left ventricle and so on. Tests show that 100% of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia have an irregular heartbeat. At various periods during the 24 hours, the heart, instead of working happily away going "bump-BUMP, bump-BUMP", every now and again goes "buhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuh". The T-wave (the waves are called P, Q, R, S and T) is normally a peak, and then the wave levels off and starts with the P-wave again. In chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia patients, the T-wave flattens off, or actually inverts. That means the blood in the left ventricle is not being squeezed up through the aorta and around through the body.

My client from Sudbury had this test done and, lo and behold, the results stated: "The shape of T and S-T suggests left ventricle strain pattern, although voltage and so on is normal." The doctor had no clue as to why the T-wave was not working properly. I analysed the report of this patient who had been turned down by Canada Pensions and sent it back to them. They wrote back, saying: "It looks like we may have made a mistake. We are going to give you a hearing and you can explain this to us in more detail."

So it is not all in your imagination. There is actual physical damage to the heart. The left ventricle muscles do show scarring. That is why many people are diagnosed with a heart condition when they first develop fibromyalgia, but it's only one of several problems because the mycoplasma can do all kinds of damage.

You can also ask your doctor for a blood volume test. Every human being requires a certain amount of blood per pound of body weight, and it has been observed that people with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis and other illnesses do not have the normal blood volume their body needs to function properly. Doctors aren't normally aware of this.

This test measures the amount of blood in the human body by taking out 5 cc, putting a tracer in it and then putting it back into the body. One hour later, take out 5 cc again and look for the tracer. The thicker the blood and the lower the blood volume, the more tracer you will find.

The analysis of one of my clients stated: "This patient was referred for red cell mass study. The red cell volume is 16.9 ml per kg of body weight. The normal range is 25 to 35 ml per kg. This guy has 36% less blood in his body than the body needs to function." And the doctor hadn't even known the test existed.

If you lost 36% of your blood in an accident, do you think your doctor would tell you that you are alright and should just take up line dancing and get over it? They would rush you to the nearest hospital and start transfusing you with blood. These tragic people with these awful diseases are functioning with anywhere from 7% to 50% less blood than their body needs to function.

The body undoes the damage itself. The scarring in the brain of people with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia will be repaired. There is cellular repair going on all the time. But the mycoplasma has moved on to the next cell.

In the early stages of a disease, doxycycline may reverse that disease process. It is one of the tetracycline antibiotics, but it is not bactericidal; it is bacteriostatic--it stops the growth of the mycoplasma. And if the mycoplasma growth can be stopped for long enough, then the immune system takes over.

Doxycycline treatment is discussed in a paper by mycoplasma expert Professor Garth Nicholson, PhD, of the Institute for Molecular Medicine.15 Dr Nicholson is involved in a US$8-million mycoplasma research program funded by the US military and headed by Dr Charles Engel of the NIH. The program is studying Gulf War veterans, 450 of them, because there is evidence to suggest that Gulf War syndrome is another illness (or set of illnesses) caused by mycoplasma.