Experiments In Vivo

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So here we are, two years after the scientific community was told which rock to look under, still arguing about whether two or three scientists can reproduce their work or not. In the meantime, a promising avenue of treatment, antiretrovirals, has been shut down like a prohibition, for the flimsiest of reasons. Too dangerous (compared to what?). Too expensive (for whom?). AIDS patients need their drugs (since they have a serious illness). How can we treat it if we don’t know the precise agent we are treating? The way doctors treat people every day. Best guess. I actually think we have a better model than the rheumatologists are using to prescribe incredibly toxic drugs for patients with autoimmune diseases.

AIDS patients have to be treated forever, but we don’t have any idea if that is true for us or not. Just think how much we’d know now if part of the money that was spent trying to find a virus that doesn’t exist in nature could have been spent on very simple clinical trials of safe, existing drugs. It is becoming clear that at least some are concerned about lab contamination by viruses that are very good at infecting human cells in vitro. See Zhang and Sfanos on the side bar. It’s about time somebody worried. Whatever works, and fear is a good motivator. It worked for HIV.

Here are a few excellent papers that have helped me to refine my working model, though I don’t like it that it is going towards greater complexity, since I like grand unifying theories. But the level of complexity of the problem is intersecting with the state of the art. Cutting edge sequencing and analytics are required.

I still think it’s simple retroviruses at the bottom of it, and maybe not just gammas. Simple retroviruses go for the germ line and become endogenous. Multiple assaults. Most end as ineffective sequences, with deletions, tamed by restriction factors that give an individual’s offspring an evolutionary edge. ERV’s can be defective and still cause disease. They can even become symbionts:

Defective sequences can be reconstituted by new incoming. It is not as simple as one sequence or one virus, or even five strains of one virus. Lots of viruses and pieces of viruses. Lots and lots of exposures, if it came from vaccines, grown in all kinds of cells, murine and avian, administered parenterally to most of the human race for decades, and subject to recombination. There were clearly waves when people got sick, but those may have been recombination events, when some necessary piece was supplied to reconstitute something that was there already. Or maybe there were waves of helper viruses that went out and turned on what was there. Or particular environmental toxins that activated one from an earlier invasion (from the Weiss paper above: “..we were able to show that treatment of normal chicken cells with a variety of activating agents such as ionizing radiation or carcinogens stimulated release of virus..”).

This was probably part of the problem too; endless selective breeding of sick mice that produce retroviruses that they are resistant to, but the cells of other species may not be, hence putting lab workers at risk, especially those working directly with tissue culture and xenografts. The Mouse Trap: The dangers of using one lab animal to study every disease. Engber.
The younger women I am seeing, and who have written to me, often have symptoms consistent with PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome). The few I have tested in my practice, have laboratory evidence of LH insensitivity, LH/FSH ratio greater than 2 in a menstruating woman with normal FSH. LH insensitivity interferes with the egg being released from the developing follicular cyst, so the corpus luteum doesn’t form properly, progesterone isn’t made normally, and estrogen dominance, with all its problems, ensues. The condition is also characterized by high androgens and a dysmetabolic syndrome causing central body fat distribution. Does progesterone deficiency favor the virus? Physiologic replacement is a powerful therapeutic option for women so affected. PCOS is a very common cause of reduced fertility, so if germline retroviral infection is involved, it isn’t a very good strategy for a virus that is not spread horizontally. However from an evolutionary perspective, if the virus succeeds in most of its hosts, the few that become infertile and are a dead end, are just part of the evolutionary process. Remember that only a very small percentage of HTLV patients ever get sick and genetic factors are probably key.
Env proteins are strongly implicated in the neuropathogenicity of MLV’s, and also recognized in the evolving retroviral model of RRMS (relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis).

Could antiretroviral drugs be effective in multiple sclerosis? A case report. Maruszak: This is a letter to the editor behind a paywall, but documents the resolution of significant neurologic impairments, including bladder and bowel incontinence, in an MS patient after being treated with HAART for HIV infection. The patient developed MS and was infected with HIV in ’85. He was treated with HAART in ’96, improved rapidly with resolution of many MS symptoms, including fatigue, within two years. It happened in the late ’90’s and it was just published… It is the only paper I could find where anyone has documented an effect of arv’s on MS, despite the fact a retrovirus has been suspected for over a decade. How’s that for blinders! What is it about this particular class of drugs that has everybody so spooked? Is it because AIDS patients have to take them forever? It may not be the case here. The best anecdote I’ve heard was 16, only sick for 8 months, responded quickly, stopped treatment after 6 months and has stayed well, as far as I know. And even if the drugs are for good, they are very clean drugs. HIV infected people have gotten very good research into their disease.

The literature suggests that the search for a sensitive enough reverse transcriptase assay was abandoned for HIV, as specific testing became highly sensitive. However, if you were looking for generic replication competent retroviruses that you could monitor, a clinically useful RT assay would seem to be indispensable. RT assays have been used in the lab since the late ’60’s, but seem to have been abandoned more recently, except for research purposes involving monitoring of retroviral vectors. Maybe one of the scientists reading can explain why this test isn’t clinically available? Why wouldn’t it be useful for MS, for example, given the suggestions of the papers above concerning that disease? Maybe some money to be made here, for any diagnostic test patent seekers who might be reading.

Ali remains on Viread/Isentress and continues to be surprised by greater than expected resilience, e.g. rapidly recovering from having her wisdom teeth extracted. I came off Isentress a couple of months ago and didn’t notice much of anything. It didn’t seem a good idea to stay on monotherapy and someone already committed to the experiment needs to give a protease inhibitor a try; therefore, I started Lexiva two weeks ago.

There was a recent paper showing that amprenavir inhibits XMRV in vitro (Li/Wlodawer on the side bar), but also, there are several clues in the literature that suggest that it might inhibit MLV proteases more broadly. HIV treatment wasn’t truly effective until PI’s were added. The first time I tried Lexiva, as a fourth drug then, still using an HIV model of HAART, it had the unexpected effect of CNS activation and it is doing that again. I describe it as “turning up the volume”, a perceptual shift. I am more reactive, but that is dying down now. It doesn’t do this with AIDS patients and I have no explanation, other than it moves the disease in some way, since I don’t see how it is an adverse effect of the drug. The other arv’s shook things up for me for a while too, but that felt like an inflammatory flare of usual symptoms. Physically, I think I feel a bit better, stronger in the last few days, but it could well be the swing of the pendulum. I will stay the course and report.

Here is a letter that I received a few days ago:

Dr. Deckoff-Jones,
I’m writing to you in the hope that by sharing a little of my medical history I can help. If XMRV is totally out of the picture it must in my case be a related retro-virus. I think if there were a place to pool ME/CFS patient information there might be something made obvious through comparative analysis.
I started on AZT about a year and a half ago On 3/6/10, my health seemed to gradually improve, by december I developed pain on the inside of both legs so at the end of december I stopped taking AZT. I declined rapidly and by the first of February I was worse than before I started on AZT. A few days into February I started taking Viread and Isentress and felt even worse for the next 10 days to two weeks (which I had read to expect this) I actually kept busy just to take my mind off how bad I felt.
Gradually I started to feel better and by the end of May of this year I thought I was well on my way to a normal existence. I think it was July and September I declined. Today I am definitely better than when I started but still far from my goal. I don’t want to stop taking anti-retrovirals.
I’m wondering if I would have done better if I had included Emtricitabine and if I should start now. I will discuss it with my doctor. If a yet unknown retrovirus is the culprit, it’s anybody’s guess as to which drugs are most effective.
I think the best course of action would be to find the cohort who have responded to the three above mentioned drugs and divide them into groups to see how they respond to other (additional) anti-retrovirals.
I think everyone affected would be perfectly okay with finding the treatment before finding the cause. Even if it’s a small subset of patients, we will have chipped away a little at this stumbling block we call ME/CFS.
I have had this for 18 and 1/2 years and I’m about to turn 64. So like everyone else I want answers now.

Sick patients trying to figure it out on their own, the ultimate failure of an ineffectual system. Scientists not only don’t talk to patients or doctors, they don’t even talk to each other, since somebody might steal their ideas. All closeted, each guy alone in a lab looking at a little piece of the elephant, writing in notebooks with pens?!! No copies? It seems even more dysfunctional than our broken medical system, that a dispute between a scientist and their employer can result in the hopes of an entire patient community being dashed on the shoals of intellectual property law and the criminal justice system.

I would like to thank Dr. Lipkin for being the voice of reason in an insane situation. He is positioned to help us. I hope he stays interested in our plight. We have very few friends, but maybe one new one who has the wherewithall to crack the case.

I maintain a confidential elist for patients taking antiretrovirals. Anyone reading who is taking arv’s and who would like to be signed up, please contact me: jdeckoffjones@gmail.com

Today’s song: If Not Now
by Tracy Chapman
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210 thoughts on “Experiments In Vivo”

  1. >"Don't downplay negative data, don't inflate positive data. "

    What does the negative data show? It shows researchers taking a synthetic virus they thought were the viruses found and looking for that. But the evidence in the original paper and subsequent work published by Lo et al and placed within the genbank have now confirmed none of them found a synthetic virus, but various polytropic MLV-related viruses present in humans. Several lines of evidence do not come under the heading of "possible contamination" and stack the probabilities for those viruses existing. The negative studies could find a different synthetic virus spiked into blood. However a synthetic virus not found by Mikovits, Ruscetti, Lo, Alter and Hanson is never going to be present in patients unintergrated.

  2. >@Tony

    That western blots were not performed by Dr Mikvoits, so you are accusing someone else with you innuendo. Science had the labels changed for publication knowing that AZA would not now be there and the codes switched to protect the identity of participants. Coffin reviewed the paper and saw this slide back in 2009 along with every other bit of data, which is why he did blink once when Dan Peterson then discussed the use of AZA in those same assays at the CFSAC only a few days after the publication of the paper. If you search the internet you will see that patients have been discussing the use of AZA in the assays for 2 years.

    Judy mustn't have the notebooks as other have managed to obtained that same raw data from the paper and post it during a time that Max claims he had the materials.

  3. >@Tony

    What Oerganix said, squared.

    You are spewing. And being snarky. There are other blogs where that is welcomed and encouraged, and you'll have folks to prosthelytize to to your hearts content.

    You lose any credibility you may have had with your patronizing sarcasm and know-it-all attitude. Your energies might be better targeted at the CDC, Reeves, Wessely, CAA, etc etc. They've done immeasurable far reaching damage to the patient community. Every last one of us.

  4. >Tony Mach — five posts in a row spewing a lot of hostility. It's verbally abusive and insensitive to the rest of us who read the blog and have CFS, a real debilitating disease, which is not cured by exercise or therapy (although if we have to be subjected to more of this language, we may all need therapy!).

    Everyone writes opinions here and listens to everyone, using critical thinking. If a cause comes up during research for CFS, I'm sure everyone will be open to that.

    Also, your tone, including "Monte Python Witch" is quite arrogant and sexist. You should tone that down, considering that this blog is run by a woman and the majority of people who have this disease are women. And we don't need to hear or see this kind of nastiness. And it aggravates stress, which intensifies symptoms.

    I'm impressed that these posts were allowed. They go way over the top and do NOT make a contibution to people with CFS. They don't.

    You should use your energies to, as the blogger above says, pressure the CDC and other governmental agencies and researchers to add funds and do a lot more research, instead of the paltry job that's being done. You should use your intelligence to push for real help for CFS sufferers. You should take on the establishment, the Wesselys of the world, send emails to agencies to demand research funding, grants and programs so that we don't have to drag on another 20 years without a cause and treatments. Why not be constructive, and not destructive?

  5. >I want to thank Tony for the many questions he asked, all very, very important, but I too must admit that you could've said a lot more with a lot less — five post were unnecessary and some of the name-calling didn't help the many fine points you made.

    I disagree with Kathy. I think your points are very important, and indeed make a contribution to people with CFS, precisely because you dared to ask critical questions.

  6. >@Tony Mach

    For chris'sake, Dr. DJ isn't *prescribing* ARVs. She just wants to collect data from those who are taking them.

    AlphaHusky

  7. >@kathy d:

    "You should use your intelligence to push for real help for CFS sufferers."

    It's pretty obvious that that's what he's trying to do. REAL help, not some discredited 'association' that hasn't panned out, in both studies, and with the vast, vast majority of patients.

    You said you don't read or post on forums. Perhaps you should at least read some of them, then you'd see the other things people ARE studying and treatments that ARE helping people.

  8. >@Anon 5:28

    How has these retroviruses been discredited? You provide no evidence.

    What treatments do you mean and where are the studies to back up your claims? Subjective interpretations are not scientific data.

  9. >To the critics: I do read lots of CFS forums and posts every day and see what is being studied on this disease from Dr. Lipkin, Dr. Komaroff, the Drs. Light in Utah, Dr. Klimas, Dr. Natelson in NJ, and Drs. Fluge and Mella in Norway, Dr. Enlander's setting up of a center at Mount Sinai, and posts related to that, to mention a few.

    I find the tone of the five posts above to be quite off-putting and not helpful at all.

    When I say "use your intelligence" and "your drive" to be constructive about helping with this disease, I mean to the outer world where researchers are investigating the cause and possible treatments for this disease. I mean making a difference in pressuring the powers that be to do more and put more funding into this.

  10. >For months now, I've had a will that stated that a certain % of my estate would go to WPI, if I were to die. I would like to change my will and name another institution or organization. Looking for serious suggestions, where my $ may make the most difference.

  11. >i think what i most admire in people like dr. dj and judy mikovits is they press on in spite of all the hatred around them. i've been there since october 2009, and we've known for far longer (thanks to an intrepid journalist!) about the suppression of information and money for our disease. quoting defrietas out of context? give me a break!

    dr. dj, screw the haters! we need you now more than ever. continue the "unsanctioned" experimentation with arv's. if i could find a doctor who knew ONE WIT about me/cfs, i'd go for it too. i'm having enough problems finding a doctor to help me with pain meds!

    yes, keep on keeping true to thine own self and, by extention, to us. w/ love and respect ~laura tattoo xoxoxoxo

  14. >The journal science have joined in with the politics as was expected since they published the Paprotka paper. That paper should be retracted. They have relied on beliefs.

    The events leading to this had nothing to do with science and were about preventing the mountain of problems having ignored that a human gamma retroviruses exist and cause disease.

    There is no evidence of anything being wrong in any of the studies that found polytropic viruses, which includes Lombardi et al. and Lo et al. It is all spin built upon the refusal to follow the scientific method and prove the assays in the negative studies could even detect a clinical positive.

    And before RRM appears with his rediculous comments, clinical validation and discovery are inseperable. You cannot go looking for a virus by using only a synthetic virus spiked into blood to give evidence that a virus is not infecting humans. There are two separate entities.

    Shame on Science!

  15. >I am certain that Dr Ruscetti is disgusted that they have done this. There is no evidence of poor control. Most of the negative (wrong virus) papers didn't take the steps in the Lombardi paper and you cannot an EM and serology results cannot be contamination.

  16. >There is no way that Mikvoits or Ruscetti would retract. There is no reason to retract. I would now like the WPI to answer a question for me. Was it your staff that have chosen to skip the scientific method and do this?

  17. >Enter the grand conspiracy posters now that the paper is finally retracted. How could these people ever be wrong?

    *rolling my eyes*

  18. >"NCI's Francis Ruscetti, a prominent retrovirologist and one of the co-authors, attempted to coordinate a retraction with his colleagues but a dispute arose over wording that suggested some of the findings in the original paper were still valid."

    From this article in sciencemag: http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/12/in-a-rare-move-science-without-a.html

    So Ruscetti does NOT stand behind the Lombardi paper (which no longer exists in the eyes of science).

  19. >Rollying my eyes at the naivety of those who think there is a reason to retract. Do they think there is some grand conspiracy by all those finding the polytropic viruses? Do you think you will not become infected. If the politics prevails patients will be free to donate blood again. Good luck escaping the gamma retrovirus future for the human race.

  20. >They spiked 5-aza into only the CFS patient samples and not the controls. Its right there in the sciencemag article. That is downright disgusting.

  21. >"Science Executive Editor Monica Bradford says the journal always prefers authors to sign retractions. "It's the authors' work, and it's a very clear signal to scientific community that there can't be accusations of other agendas," says Bradford. Alberts says they simply had been "spun" by the authors too many times for too long. "If our editorial reaction helps to end the resources to go into this fruitless endeavor, I think we've made a contribution to the scientific community," he says."

    Well said Alberts!!

    JDJ – it REALLY is time to move on

    Dr. Snyderman – your study, although courageous, needs to be more than n=1 for anyone to take it seriously. I suggests moving on along with JDJ

  22. >"They spiked 5-aza into only the CFS patient samples and not the controls. Its right there in the sciencemag article. That is downright disgusting."

    Any retrovirologist, or any scientist studying epigenetics, would stop and say,

    "holy crap they are inducing expression of some ERV that cross reacts with their assays"

    Disgusting indeed.

    Wait – I can hear the "clinically validated assay guy/gal" coming down the hall now…

  23. >What are the chances that Mikovits' work will be validated in the ongoing studies?

    Do the scientists reading this blog thnink that Lipkin's test will find human retriviruses ie are they capable of doing that?

    Does anyone here have contact with Drs. Alter and Lo to see if they will continue studies?

  24. >I want a timer indicating how many hours passed since the XMRV Science paper was retracted.

    CFS patients following Mikovits and this XMRV fiasco as a religion are turning CFS into a Morgellons-like syndrome. It is truly sad. And most funny thing is, you are the one doing a service to those who believe that CFS is actually a psychological disease, since you do not show any sign of being able to think rationally and logically. SO sad.

    Give up and fight to find the REAL cause and a REAL cure for your disease!

  25. >"Do the scientists reading this blog thnink that Lipkin's test will find human retriviruses ie are they capable of doing that?"

    No.

    But I'm not running those experiments and not sure exactly what he is looking for. As for XMRV? No. As for other retroviruses? I would say no, but yes remains a possibility.

  26. >And when the next Lipkin study comes up negative too, how long do you think it will take the loonies to start burning him in effigy (again) as well?

  27. >Science did not retract because of AZA, which they asked to be removed from the label for publication. The study was blinded. The gel in the paper was one of dozens. Others were treated.

  28. >Science magazine is unbelievably insensitive and lacking in empathy to publish the retraction of the Science paper right before the Christmas and New Year's Eve holidays — no doubt ruining the holidays for millions of people with this illness.

    Of course, most people with this illness have been disabled too long to be able to celebrate or to have anything to celebrate about.

    I won't be celebrating Christmas this year.

  29. >Does anyone seriously believe that Lipkin did not know about this?

    Does anyone believe that Government and corporations would not do whatever it takes to further their interests?

    Does anyone still believe in the American dream or is the American nightmare a better description.

    This persons says it better than I

    What is most offensive to me is the general idea of retraction in such cases.  YOU DO NOT THROW OUT POTENTIALLY VALID EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS.  There is no proof that any element of the remaining parts of the study (after the partial retraction) were invalid.

    No one has published a replication of any aspect of this study.  The majority of confirmation studies that have been attempted looked directly for XMRV-specific sequences or antibodies.  YET THE EVIDENCE THAT THIS STUDY SPECIFICALLY FOUND "XMRV" HAS ALREADY BEEN RETRACTED, so those studies cannot be said to challenge the findings of the remainder of Lombardi et al 2009.  They were misled by Silverman's data into looking for the wrong virus.  However, it is extremely important that the serological and other evidence for the existence of a human gammatretroviral infection in a majority of tested CFS patients remains in publication, as it is unrefuted evidence.   So why the retraction??

    If journals can throw out any study whose results other researchers have not confirmed (and have not bothered to replicate) within the first two years of publication, then the scientific endeavor is in deep shit.

  30. >"YOU DO NOT THROW OUT POTENTIALLY VALID EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS."

    You do when pretty much every sane person involved believes the results aren't actually valid after all.

  31. >Simon Wessely speaks the truth.

    ""What is sad however is the degree of opprobrium hurled from some quarters at the scientists who correctly failed to replicate the original observation."

    Yes, no scientist has attempted to replicated the clinically validated assays from the Lombardi paper. They have failed to replicate. Why? That is a fundamental of the scientific method.

  32. >"You do when pretty much every sane person involved believes the results aren't actually valid after all."

    The negative studies were not involved in looking for PMRVs. They only looked for a synthetic virus that called VP62/XMRV.

    Anon, don't bother trying to fool people. Alter, Lo, Hanson, Ruscetti, Cabreara and a list with another 50 plus names have seen the evidence. They apply science and not beliefs.

  33. >Hey Retrovirologist,
    Good to see you back. I have to respect Lipkin for pushing the science forward. O course the question is whether his newfangled test can find new retroviruses. I sure hope so.

    But this situation is giving me flashbacks. There was a time c 2000 that we thought mycoplasmas were the CAUSE of Gulf War Illness and CFS. So we talked to Stephen Strauss one day in Washington. His reply was, I can't wait to get the study done so we can move on. I don't think mycoplasma is the cause." The test was to give vets positive for mycoplasma several months of doxycycline. Many stopped the md. Some improved, most flatlined. Hum – looks like some infection may have been involved and doxy was not effective or maybe mycoplasma was an innocent bystander. We see similar results in CFS patients with mycoplasma and also in AIDS patients.

    Okay, enough. What's my point? If LIpkin's study can't find any retroviruses we patients areback to square one. But that does not mean there isn't a retrovirus involved.

    I hope we find the cause in my lifetime. I am celebrating Christmas though whether we find it or not.

    Rituxan reminds me of the doxycycline trial. If reducing B cells reduces inflammation this still points to infection especially something that hangs out inside B cells. Have you read the studiesusing Rituxan in AIDS patients?

    Check it out.

  34. >Lipkin is not pushing the science forward if he is only getting Mikovits and Ruscetti to replicate. That is if they are even being allowed to replicate. The only way to do this is to have all labs use the methods from all the other labs too. Then you can ask why the CDC finds nothing with their assay but does with the clinically validated assays. That last sentence is a joke though as the reason is clinical validation.

  35. >"Dr. Snyderman – your study, although courageous, needs to be more than n=1 for anyone to take it seriously. I suggests moving on along with JDJ"

    Makes you scared doesn't it. Deep sequencing by someone who is looking for the viruses.

  36. >To the previous Anonymous poster:

    Can you please explain what you mean when you say "Makes you scared doesn't it."? Who is scared? And what are they scared of? What does being scared have to do with Dr. Snyderman or his own personal studies? I'm sorry, but I am simply baffled by what you wrote.

  37. >Why else would politics be used to prevent the publication of papers or the advancement of our understanding of what HGRVs do to those infected if not fear?

    They fear the consequences of having to tackle the numbers infected. Instead they are leaving this to the future. By then who knows if humans will have survived this mess, or will we have killed ourselves off anyway.

  38. >Dear Paula,

    IMHO there are multiple causes, mulitple factors, depending on one's exposures, upbringing, genetics and environment. Your post reinforced that belief.

  39. >To the previous Anonymous poster:

    My apologies again, but who is "they" that you refer to? What makes you think great numbers are infected? You make this sound like a a bad science fiction novel. If great numbers of people were truly infected and infecting others, I think we would all know about it by now.

  40. >Someone above said: "Good luck escaping the gamma retrovirus future for the human race."

    Oh pul-eaze. Extrapolating from Mikovits original study, 10 times more healthy people have these so-callled gamma retroviruses than people with ME.

    It's NOT THE CAUSE.

  41. >"If great numbers of people were truly infected and infecting others, I think we would all know about it by now."

    They didn't know about HIV or HTLV for decades.

  42. >"Oh pul-eaze. Extrapolating from Mikovits original study, 10 times more healthy people have these so-callled gamma retroviruses than people with ME.

    It's NOT THE CAUSE."

    You cannot prove that and have not done so.

    HTLV only causes disease in around 10% of those infected.

  43. >"You cannot prove that and have not done so."

    Well said, as I personally believe that CFS is caused by little green men from the galaxy Andromeda, but unfortunately no one here on earth has developed an assay sensitive enough to detect them. So until someone does, my theory is perfectly valid and cannot be disproved.

  44. >"Well said, as I personally believe that CFS is caused by little green men from the galaxy Andromeda"

    There is no disease called CFS, but many diseases and conditions are wrongly captured by that political term. ME is a neurological disease that is associated with HGRVs.

    The assays created by the Ruscettis and Dr Mikovits are clinically validated.

    Aliens may or may not exist, but you could never say they do not exist.

  46. >Corporations and the government are clearly motivated to prevent good science from ever happening.

    Think about the enormous loss of revenue if RV's were proven to cause illness. A few come to mind…

    – numerous lawsuits

    – end of vaccine manufacturing

    – labs filled with mice and equipment geared for
    working with mice

    – providing ARV's to those effected

  47. >"The assays created by the Ruscettis and Dr Mikovits are clinically validated."

    No they are not, because no one else in the medical or scientific world considers them validated. Validation, by definition, requires the acceptance and acknowledgement by one's peers of a certain study and its results as being valid and accurate. Science made it very clear today that these assays are not validated. Just because you personally call them validated does not make them so, even if you repeat it one thousand times every day.

  48. >-all research using animal and human products halted until they can assess if it can ever be safe to continue, and if the benefits outweigh the creation of new viruses.

    -People afraid of vaccines knowing they save millions, but knowing they could introduce disease into your family.

    -People not knowing if they can pass viruses onto their pets and if their pets can pass viruses to them.

    -The overnight destruction of industries built around the testing and treatment of other diseases also caused by these viruses.

  49. >@Anon 6:27PM

    " Validation, by definition, requires the acceptance and acknowledgement by one's peers of a certain study and its results as being valid and accurate. "

    No it does not. Science today made nothing clear. They have retracted based on beliefs and not the scientific method.

    There are two types of validation. Which one do you think you are referring to?

    There is analytical validation – for simplicity I will call this in vitro.
    There is clinical validation – for simplicity I will call this in vivo.

    If an assay can detect a spiked sample it is analytically validated.
    If an assay can detect a positive clinical samples it is clinically validated.

    Mikovits and Ruscetti detect PMRVs, not XMRV. The negative papers only had assays to detect VP62/XMRV.

    None of those negative papers have found the PMRVs. Where did they come from?

  50. >Prof Simon Wessely, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London said: "The results were simply too good to be true.

    "CFS is a complex mulfactorial condition with fuzzy boundaries, and almost certainly does not represent any single entity any more that it is caused by any single agent."

    But he added: "What is sad however is the degree of opprobrium hurled from some quarters at the scientists who correctly failed to replicate the original observation.

    "This is not the kind of atmosphere that benefits science or patients."

    FROM BBC

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