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. >"Except for Mikovits of course, and perhaps Ruscetti to a lesser degree, every other scientist involved in the Science paper study wanted a full retraction. "

    Mikovits and the Russcetti's didn't want to retract. Silverman's data was wrong. So who did retract and for what reason?

    Dr Russcetti and Dr Mikovits have shown that they found PMRVs, but Science have used their beliefs in a scientific matter. There is no evidence of contamination or poor control in the experiments of Mikvoits and Ruscetti. Science should be ashamed of themselves.

  3. >The origin of HIV-1 isolate HTLV-IIIB
    SHENG-YUNG P. CHANG, BARBARA H. BOWMAN, JUDITH B. WEISS, REBECA E. GARCIA & THOMAS J. WHITE* 1993

    "THE striking similarity between the first two human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) isolates Lai/LAV (formerly LAV, isolated at the Pasteur Institute1,2) and Lai/IIIB (formerly HTLV-IIIB, reported to be isolated from a pooled culture at the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology (LTCB) of the National Cancer Institute3,4) provoked considerable controversy in light of the high level of variability found among subsequent HIV-1 isolates5. In November 1990, the Office of Scientific Integrity at the National Institutes of Health commissioned our group to analyse archival samples established at the Pasteur Institute and LTCB between 1983 and 1985. Retrospective analyses6,7 have shown that contamination of a culture derived from patient BRU by one from patient LAI was responsible for the provenance of HIV-1 Lai/LAV; the contaminated culture (M2T-/B) was sent to LTCB in September 19836,7. "

    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v363/n6428/abs/363466a0.html

  5. >Drs. Snyderman and Deckoff-Jones – I, too, am a sample of one – with several observations now.

    I, too was positive for antibodies to XMRV. Why? Where is the intellectual curiosity?

    And scholars have suggested it is a response to ERVs. Okay. But why do I have this response when others don't?

    Lipkin said the retraction was premature. It is. This is by no means over.

    It took technological innovation a lhundred years ago to show TB was caused by bacteria, not by dissolute living, and that epilepsy was caused by brain wiring malfunctioning. I knew we had to get past PCR, inconsistent not just in this case but also in Lyme's and HHV-6A. I hope NGS provides some answers.

    But I remain, like you, a sample of one. In my case, the drug that helps is Ampligen, an immune modulator.

    I had symptoms of encephalitis and serious CNS dysfunction for five years. By fall 1998 I was bedridden except for slow trips to the bathroom, with help, and accommodations suggested by a visiting nurse. I couldn't even brush my own teeth! .

    Observation 1: Test posituve for the 37 kDa Rnase-L and HHV-6A, and have severe symptoms of (literally) M.E.

    Observation 2: on an immune modulator, the immune defects resolved and the virus went dormant. Go off Ampligen after 20 months.

    Observation 3: (one year off Ampligen): collapse with same symptoms, and HHV-6A is active again along with EBV. Takes seven months to get Ampligen back.

    Observation 4: Restart Ampligen May 2002. Six months later virus dormant, immune defect gone. After six months on Ampligen HHV-6A is silent as is the 37kDa Rnase-L. It takes almost three years to get back to where I was in 2000.

    Observation 6: FDA takes Ampligen away after head of practice dies, Feb 2008. At that point I had been on Ampligen almost six years and was doing well.

    Observation 7: relapse seven months later, September 2008. This time I go to Peterson and we run LOTS of tests. In addition to the 37kDa, I have a natural killer cell function of 2%. In addition to HHV-6A, I have EBV, HHV-7, cytomegalovirus, and Coxsackie B. HHV-6A and CMV (HHV-5) are active in my SPINAL FLUID.

    Observation 8: get worse while waiting a year and a half to get back on Ampligen. Body rejects Vistide. Have abnormal curious patterns, SPECT scan, VO2 MAX scores consistent with a serious cardiac condition.

    Observation 9: learn I have antibodies to XMRV. DO YOU THINK THAT IS A COINCIDENCE? I don't.

    End of story, helped by a year of Ampligen but went home. Relapsed in three months. But back on Ampligen as of October 3, and crawling out of the abyss again.

    Okay. So we have another series of observations with another sample of 1 – but it makes sense that this drug would work against that collection, and that, sadly, I can't keep the viruses and immune defects down off Ampligen..

    A famous economist once said, "Anecdote is the singular of data.". Here we are.

  7. >It definitely cannot be an ERV the immune response. And if anyone wants to claim cross contamination they need to present data. Again it has never happened.

  8. >Well said, Mary Schweitzer, and happy holidays to you. Wishing you a year of better health!

    Dr. Mikovits said that the Science retraction was premature and that the tests now going on should decide the matter. This, in addition to Dr. Lipkin saying that the retraction was premature and that the test results should be in by March.

  9. >The Lipkin study should not be set up as if it will decide the matter. Science does not operate on definitive studies. The research should only be continuing. After the mess of the blood working group where there were no real controls and PCR to VP62, we have to demand more from this. Every lab should also be using the assays of the others. That way if there is a mix up with codes for the blinding you can see that reflected in the results. There should also be no one now using VP62 or 22Rv1 as those have nothing to do with polytropic viruses as confirmed in Lombardi, Lo and the recent genbank env sequences which are polytropic.

  10. >@ Anonymous

    "Van Kuppevled didn't use the clinical positives to validate. They used VP62/22Rv1."

    Which is exactly what I argued. Sending some samples to a scientist doesn not mean that this scientist calibrated his assays using that positive sample.

    Van Kuppenveld reveived a positive patient sample, as did Gallo. Same thing. In both the Van Kuppenveld and Gallo papers there is not a word about calibrating their assays against the samples they receieved. Same thing.

    Provide me a paper that reports this instead of you dreaming it does, or don't you want to make me 100,- poorer?

  13. >@Anon

    "The sample of the virus you sent us the first time had, upon arrival, no detectable virus…"

    Which is supposed to mean that Gallo calibrated his assays to these "known positives"? Are you serious? Not only does it not show that, it is mentioned in a totally different context. For instance, check the "100% normal human cellular sequences!" and "we wasted two weeks on this" quotes. It means Gallo still thought they were truly negative so he didn't "re-tweak" his assays until he got positives on these "known positives" – it thus totally contradicts your position.

    But this is that all about what you've found through all these months of googling? Seriously? Some old HIV letters and some papers on calibration of assays in a clinical context? Not one single description from a published scientific validation paper about calibration of assays to the known positives?

    What does that tell you? I'll asnwer: no one has ever done it the way you think is "normal".

    And what's this repeated mentioning of my (supposed) first name? Is that meant as some kind of intimidation?

  14. >"The OSI chief, Suzanne Hadley, was then drafting the final OSI report and about to conclude that Gallo's chief investigative scientist, Mikulas Popovic, the primary author of the most significant of the four Science papers, had falsified the data in this paper – and to recommend that he be condemned for scientific misconduct.

    But, when Popovic heard of this, in desperation he had produced long-hidden key evidence. He gave Hadley a 1984 typed draft of the key Science paper that he had kept hidden overseas. Among other things, this draft revealed that Robert Gallo had extensively changed this paper at the last moment to hide their use of the French virus."

    What are you going to do about ME/PMRVs and HGRVs RRM/Mark?
    http://www.fearoftheinvisible.com/aidsresearch

  16. >@Anon

    "this draft revealed that Robert Gallo had extensively changed this paper at the last moment to hide their use of the French virus."

    Yeah, that so totally indicates that Gallo calibrated his asssys to the known positives of the French. It's totally inconceivable that he "used" them for other experiments that would actually make sense.

    And now, thanks to you, we can forget about scientists building upon peer reviewed papers – all scientists should be totally aware of the need to calibrate their assays to known positives due to this Janine Roberst internet write-up abot Gallo "using" samples more than he said he did.

    Great detective work.

    "What are you going to do about ME/PMRVs and HGRVs"

    The same as I am going to do about ME/invisible pink unicorns.

  17. >RMM,

    You should know by not to feed the trolls. They are rife in this blog. And hungry.

    Hungry for clinically validated assays with known positives.

  18. >Letter: Montagnier to Gallo, dated 11 July 1984.

    "Exchange of Material
    B. From Pasteur to NCI:
    1.
    Virus LAV: July 1983 (You were not able to grow the virus)
    Virus LAV: September 1984 (You were able to grow the virus and confirm morphology)

    Not acknowledged in your publication"

    http://www.sciencefictions.net/pdfdocs/L_Montagnier_to_R_Gallo_07.11.84.pdf

    Letter from Gallo to Montagnier. (Gallo's own words) 24 August 1984

    "The sample of the virus you sent us the first time had, upon arrival, no detectable virus…"

    http://www.sciencefictions.net/pdfdocs/R_Gallo_to_J-C_Chermann_08.24.84.pdf

    Paper that shows the virus in the paper was the same virus.

    The origin of HIV-1 isolate HTLV-IIIB
    SHENG-YUNG P. CHANG, BARBARA H. BOWMAN, JUDITH B. WEISS, REBECA E. GARCIA & THOMAS J. WHITE* 1993

    "Retrospective analyses 6,7 have shown that contamination of a culture derived from patient BRU by one from patient LAI was responsible for the provenance of HIV-1 Lai/LAV; the contaminated culture (M2T-/B) was sent to LTCB in September 1983 6,7. "

    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v363/n6428/abs/363466a0.html

    Draft of M. Popovic’s May 4, 1984 Science article

    "Recently a new variant of HTLV has been isolated from a patient with lymphadenopathy also named lymphadenopathy associated virus (LAV) ( ) which is described here as HTLV-III."

    "We found that the virus, called LAV (provided by L. Montagnier & JC Charmann) produces similar cytopathic effects…"

    http://www.sciencefictions.net/pdfdocs/draft_of_m_popovic_05.04.84_science_article_undated.pdf

    F. Barré-Sinoussi to SOI (December 14, 1993)

    "I responded that there was one thing for which he was responsible, namely, that he had mixed LAV together with other AIDS viruses that he grew in his pool.

    Dr. Popovic responded by telling me that he mixed LAB with the other viruses to increase the capacity of growth of the virus. He said he was successful in doing this, and I responded, "Yes, but what you got was LAV" ("HTLV-IIIb," the LTCB "pool" virus has been proven to be LAV/LAI [Chang et al., Nature, 363, 1993, pp. 466-469])

    http://www.sciencefictions.net/pdfdocs/f_barre-sinoussi_to_soi_12.14.93.pdf

    I think RRM/Mark that you are not interested in this or ME or HGRVs, but you are interested in whatever your agenda is.

  19. >"It is noteworthy that the Nobel citation for Montagnier and Barré-Sinoussi makes no mention of the American researcher, Robert Gallo, despite the fact that Gallo is still officially credited in the US as a co-discoverer of the AIDS virus. Those who wonder why should refer to the book that forensically and compellingly reveals what actually happened ["Science Fictions" by John Crewdson; Little Brown; 2002]. This shows that both Gallo, in his lab at the NIH, and Robin Weiss, at the Chester Beatty lab in London, received samples of Montagnier's virus in 1983, and that later both men claimed independently that they themselves had discovered a virus in AIDS patients. Genetic sequencing later revealed that in both instances what they had discovered was actually Montagnier's virus, which had somehow become mixed up in their own cultures. Weiss later admitted his error, but to this day Gallo (who was later found guilty of scientific misconduct in an Office of Research Integrity enquiry) insists that he did nothing wrong. It would seem that the Nobel committee remains unconvinced. "
    http://www.aidsorigins.com/content/view/213/64/

  21. >Weiss to Montagnier 12 April 1984

    "Thank you very much for sending us another sample of LAV. We have had it growing at least temporarily in T-cells and electron micrographs show that a small percentage of the cells produce a lot of particles."
    http://www.sciencefictions.net/pdfdocs/r_a_weiss_to_l_montagnier_04.12.84.pdf

    Sending and use positives is the standard approach as it is scientific. None of the negative studies have done this. Instead looking for a synthetic virus spiked into blood that is not the viruses found by Mikovits Ruscetti Lo and Alter.

    For the final time RRM/Mark what are you going to do about ME and HGRVs?

  22. >"Instead looking for a synthetic virus spiked into blood that is not the viruses found by Mikovits Ruscetti Lo and Alter."

    So what would you acknowledge that Mikovits find? A true XMLV? Or PMLV?

    Please, enlighten us with your clear knowledge of retrovirology.

  23. >MLV stands for murine leukaemia virus, that is a mouse virus.

    MRV stands for murine leukaemia virus-related virus, that is a virus that is descended from MLV ancestors, but is not an MLV.

    Mikvoits and Ruscetti isolated the virus in people with ME but only sequenced a portion of the virus. That portion was polytropic. The remaining and complete sequencing had been thought to have been correctly done by Silverman, who declared the final portion of the virus to be xenotropic. This was wrong. Silverman instead of sequencing the isolates sent him sequenced the VP62 plasmid that he had created in 2006 and which was found to be contaminating his samples. The other fraction of these that Mikvotis and Ruscetti sent him have been proven to be VP62 plasmid contamination free by an independent lab. That same plasmid was also never in Ruscetti or Mikvoits labs.

    The full sequencing of the virus is still to be complete, but the WPI before Mikovits left did upload to the genbank the portion of the virus that had not been sequenced and again they are polytropic like the other portion of the virus that was published in Lombardi et al. These are the same viruses as found by Lo and Alter. Polytropic MRVs, or PMRVs. Not XMRV.

  24. >Invisible pink unicorn?

    If you are that confident that HGRV does not exist, then what accounts for the electron micrograph?

    If you want to say "another retrovirus", where is your curiosity? Please go find your curiosity.

    I don't mean to be rude at all.

    I hope you are not a pseudoskeptic. Pseudoskeptics have zero curiosity. They are not scientists, even if one or two of them work in a lab.

    Electron micrograph: a picture that will not be erased from the minds of the people you are trying to convince. How are you going to explain it?

    Where is the curiosity from even one of the detractors of HGRV?

    I haven't seen any curiosity from a single one of them.

    That smells fishy.

    Doesn't that smell fishy to anybody else?

  25. >Why is the PBMC assay used by the WPI in the blood working group not the same as that used in Lombardi et al?

    "WPI performed nested RT-PCR and PCR assays essentially as previously described (2). RNA was extracted from the plasma using a QIAamp Viral RNA kit (Qiagen). The PBMC aliquot was split into two fractions with half being used for RNA extraction using a RNeasy kit (Qiagen). All RNA was converted to cDNA using a VILO kit (Invitrogen). Genomic DNA was extracted from the rest of the PBMCs and WB using QIAamp blood kit (Qiagen). Nested PCR was performed using the Gag-O-F & Gag-O-R outer and Gag-I-F & Gag-I-R inner primers and conditions as described (2), except 2.5 mM MgCl2, primers are each at 200 nM were employed, Phusion taq (Thermo) was used. All products were gel excised and purified for sequencing. As a control for mouse DNA contamination PCR for mouse mtDNA sequences was performed on all positive samples (4)."

    That would have affective the sensitivity of the assay.

  27. >"MLV stands for murine leukaemia virus, that is a mouse virus."

    This is the only thing that you wrote in your reply that was true.

    The rest is pure rubbish.

    "Mikvoits and Ruscetti isolated the virus in people with ME but only sequenced a portion of the virus. That portion was polytropic. The remaining and complete sequencing had been thought to have been correctly done by Silverman, who declared the final portion of the virus to be xenotropic. This was wrong. Silverman instead of sequencing the isolates sent him sequenced the VP62 plasmid that he had created in 2006 and which was found to be contaminating his samples. The other fraction of these that Mikvotis and Ruscetti sent him have been proven to be VP62 plasmid contamination free by an independent lab. That same plasmid was also never in Ruscetti or Mikvoits labs.

    The full sequencing of the virus is still to be complete, but the WPI before Mikovits left did upload to the genbank the portion of the virus that had not been sequenced and again they are polytropic like the other portion of the virus that was published in Lombardi et al. These are the same viruses as found by Lo and Alter. Polytropic MRVs, or PMRVs. Not XMRV."

    Complete and utter rubbish. You really don't know anything.

    "Please, enlighten us with your clear knowledge of retrovirology."

    My request was a clear statement of sarcasm, apparently something that google trolls are unable to catch"

  28. >"That would have affective the sensitivity of the assay."

    I doubt you even know what the paragraph that you copied and pasted really means.

  29. >It is not over because PMRVs and the evidence for them has not been challenged. The viruses are going nowhere and neither are the sick. Science is dead at this time until someone with courage decides they cannot abandon the scientific method.

  30. >@Anon 2:08 PM

    You have made no comment why.

    Can you state what was used in Lombardi et al. for the PBMC assay? It was not "2.5 mM MgCl2, primers are each at 200 nM were employed, Phusion taq (Thermo)".

  31. >Oh for the google troll that is pushing so hard for "clinically validated assays and known positives"

    PNAS paper (Lo/Alter) gets retracted as well. Oh please explain this one to me, conspiracy theorist.

    "The authors wish to note the following: “Although our published findings were reproducible in our laboratory and while there has been no evidence of contamination using sensitive mouse mitochondrial DNA or IAP assays or in testing coded panels, we have the following concerns:

    1. The original chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patient samples were of insufficient volume to distribute to other laboratories for independent confirmation.
    2. Only one (1) of many laboratories has found a similar association between polytropic murine leukemia viruses (pMLV) and CFS and a careful study of 100 CFS patients (2), as well as a coded panel recently constructed by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) (3), have found no evidence for either xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) or pMLVs in CFS patient samples.
    3. Our attempts, through collaborations, to demonstrate antibody in affected patients, to isolate the virus by culture, or to show integration sites in the human genome have failed to support the initial findings.
    4. While recall of eight patients from the original cohort 15 y later showed pMLV gag sequences in seven, the copy number was very low and phylogenetic analysis showed these sequences were not direct descendents of the original dominant strains (4). Still later samples from four of these patients tested negative in the NHLBI panel. While this result could be explained by viral clearance over time, it fails to support a sustained retroviral infection in human cells."

    The retraction is coming sometime next week.

  32. >If paper got retracted based on incorrect data most journals would be empty and all negative papers would have been retracted.

    There is no evidence to support any of the concerns listed.

    1) They can retest more patients with the same methods and criteria.
    2) PMLVs are mouse viruses. They should be talking about PMRVs. More than 4 labs are finding PMRVs.
    3) They have not provided evidence of that. What methods and patients have they used?
    4) Why should they be direct descendants or of a high copy number, these are gamma retroviruses that are rarely ever found in blood. The method used in the NHLBI were not the same methods that found the viruses.

    This is nothing to do with science.

  33. >"This is nothing to do with science."

    Yes, I agree. Your post has nothing to do with science.

  34. >"If paper got retracted based on incorrect data most journals would be empty and all negative papers would have been retracted."

    Call it what you will but the study is being retracted and you are just wrong. Plenty of negative data articles are published in every field of science every month. Sorry to disappoint you.

  35. >Call it what you will anon 2:37, the authors still believe in the integrity of the data.

    "Plenty of negative data articles are published in every field of science every month. Sorry to disappoint you."

    And they are not retracted!

    This is politics. The viruses are going nowhere though.

  36. >This is as relevant now as ever.

    "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."

    Science is in deep shit!

  37. >If you unscientific anons want this to continue go ahead and retract Urisman and the other positive prostate cancer papers. I'm sure no one is noticing that it is not based on evidence.

  38. >"Call it what you will anon 2:37, the authors still believe in the integrity of the data. "

    No, one and apparently only one author still believes in the integrity of the data. Guess who?

  39. >Mikovits, Ruscett, Lo, Alter, Hanson and all the others. Patients can se what has gone on you know. Do you really think if you are infected you will get treatment? They will deny you that too. What is there to stop them.

  43. >@Anon

    There is nothing relevant about "calibrating assays" to "knwon positives" in those Gallo quotes. Not one word about it. Yes, everybody knows that Montagnier sent samples around. But if those other scientists "calibrated" their assays to these "known positives", it should really be in the respective papers. It is not. Because they didn't.

    In fact, the only relevant thing whatsoever in your posts is the evidence of CONTAMINATION in Gallo's lab. As you will probably know, Frank Ruscetti was then working in the Gallo lab…

  44. >Ruscetti doesn't have his name on those Gallo papers. HIV was confirmed using 1 positive despite real contamination and the positive was used in their work. PCR didnt exist back then too.

    RRM/Mark good luck no catching one if the MLV-related viruses you know exist.

  46. >Wasn't used in those studies was it, but positives were which is why HIV was confirmed using the same sample from the same patients.

    Thanks by the way for doing nothing to help ME patients, particularly those bed bound, tube fed, unable to talk and desperate to die. You make me sick!

  47. >@Anon

    "Ruscetti doesn't have his name on those Gallo papers."

    If what's in a paper is über-conclusive, why can't you supply us with ONE SINGLE quote from ONE SINGLE validation paper that describes how the authors calibrated the assays to the known positives of the study they were trying to validate?

  48. >Ha! they used the positive to find the virus. An independent study retested the samples years later and found them to be from the same patient.

    RRM/Mark G you are not a patient, not a scientists and care nothing about either.

    You have nothing to offer ME patients.

  49. >Yes, they recieved samples from the French and contaminated their cultures. It says absolutely noting about calibration. If receiving samples alone would prove that, than you must also think that Van Kuppenveld calibrated his assays to the positive sample Mikovits sent him, thereby proving (again in your view) that his samples were truly negative for HGRV's.

  50. >Kuppeveld never showed his assays could detect positives. RRM/Mark G you are not interested. Your agenda has to be to pursues others that there is nothing to see. Well if they get treatment as if HGRVs are the cause that will be something. This is why Rituximab helps, mostly while on it. It will be why Amphligen and ARVs work. People are dying and suffering, you have no interested in helping them. Time you went home, unless of course you now recognise you won't have treatment either in the future because you collaborated in the charade. Silly school boy error you made thinking you would now count with them.

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