Daniel Peterson (physician)

Daniel Peterson is an American physician in private practice in the state of Nevada, and has been described as a "pioneer" in the treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). He graduated from the University of Rochester School of Medicine, Rochester, New York, in 1976 and was an intern and resident at the University of Utah Medical Center from 1976 to 1979. In 1979, he became a Diplomat of the American Board of Internal Medicine. He is president of Sierra Internal Medicine of Incline Village, established in 1981.

Along with Paul Cheney, Peterson was a treating physician at Incline Village during an outbreak of chronic fatigue syndrome that began in 1984 in the Lake Tahoe region. From 1984 to 1987, the illness was recorded in 259 patients in the area by the two physicians. The Lake Tahoe outbreak became the subject of several studies by Peterson and others. In 1995, Peterson and other investigators started conducting a 10-year follow-up study on patients seen during the outbreak. The study results were published in 2001 by the Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In the 2000 CFS documentary I Remember Me, Peterson was interviewed about some of his experiences during the Lake Tahoe outbreak.

In 1988, Peterson was the first physician to treat an extremely ill person diagnosed with CFS with the experimental drug Ampligen by obtaining compassionate-use permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Quantitative improvement in the first patient enabled the next pilot study of Ampligen in CFS patients by Peterson and other researchers. During the 1990 CFIDS Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, Peterson described positive results in 15 CFS patents after he treated them with Ampligen for approximately 6 months. In 1990 and 1991, Peterson was one of four principal investigators for the FDA approved phase II randomized placebo controlled double-blind study of the experimental intravenous drug Ampligen. The drug was administered in his Incline Village facility and three other sites. Peterson and others reported that there was statistically significant improvement in the patients receiving Ampligen. He is a principal investigator of the FDA-approved open-label safety and efficacy phase III drug study of Ampligen for treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome. Hemispherx Biopharma's New Drug Application for marketing and sale of Ampligen to treat chronic fatigue syndrome was rejected in December 2009 because the FDA concluded that the two RCTs "did not provide credible evidence of efficacy."

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