Had an obnoxious ray of sunlight not accidentally woken me up at 8:30 A.M., I probably would have slept through my only shot at an interview. Well, it was what I wanted, wasn’t it? So I set forth, sleep deprived and slightly hungover, to meet Lipkin in his 105th street townhouse home. When I found his house, Prof. Lipkin was waiting in the kitchen, eating a sandwich and fiddling with an espresso maker. Thankfully, some of that coffee found its way into the miniature mug being handed to me. And, eventually, we started talking about the CII.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a strange beast. While its name might suggest that it’s some acute form of senioritis, in reality it’s a debilitating illness which over a million Americans suffer from. Symptoms extend beyond prolonged fatigue; CFS sufferers also experience muscle pain, unsatisfying sleep, headaches, impaired memory, and mental fog as well as a host of other flu-like symptoms. While some symptoms may suggest that a viral infection is the culprit behind CFS, many scientists are not sure. In fact, there is much debate in the medical community over what exactly causes CFS. The biggest lead comes from a 2009 paper published in Science, which linked CFS to two viruses: XMRV and pMLV.

However, the paper’s results were never successfully replicated by other laboratories, which sparked skepticism among researchers. And so, as Lipkin puts it, “We went ahead and set up a study to test this thing once and for all.” Using blood samples from 147 patients with CFS and 146 controls, researchers searched for traces of XMRV and pMLV. In the end none of the participating groups found any presence of genes characteristic of the two viruses in question. The conclusion is that the 2009 discovery may have been the result of some sample contamination. For now the true cause of CFS is again a mystery. Personally, Lipkin believes that CFS may not be one disease but instead a category of symptoms caused by a large set of factors, which will present new challenges to CFS researchers.

But to Lipkin the CFS study is just one of many side projects. For example, he has a team down in Grenada investigating why a tilapia fish farm is experiencing an 80% mortality rate. But while these projects are important, Lipkin considers them his “day job… it’s easy, almost automated.” We talked about his long term interests: epigenetics, cancer prediction, preventative medicine, and creating an international network of infectious disease specialists. It’s that last one that he feels is most important for improving world health. “You don’t need 65 people [referring to the number of researchers at the New York CII], just 600 feet and a sequencing machine.”

Somehow the conversation segued from morality of eugenics (“look, I don’t want to create Aryan supermen”) to diseases caused by gastrointestinal fauna to Bill Clinton’s eating habits. “There’s this picture of Bill Clinton at Katz’s deli eating two whole sandwiches and fries,” Lipkin remembers, that being before, of course, Clinton’s quadruple bypass surgery and later implantation of two coronary stents. Now he’s a vegan, Prof. Lipkin informs me. Absentmindedly I reply that so is Clint Eastwood.

“I hadn’t heard of that, let’s look it up.” He pulls out his laptop and starts Googling “Clint Eastwood + Vegan.” “Now I’m really intrigued.” After only a few clicks, he found an article claiming Eastwood has invited prominent members of the GOP to his place for steak dinners. “I don’t think he’s a vegan if he’s eating steak dinners,” Prof. Lipkin tells me with a grin, “another myth bites the dust.”

Portrait via The Center for Infection and Immunity