I have a theory... or a proposition... and this is me being optimistic again... so please bear with me...
I think that this CDC study is a juncture, or a turning point, for ME/CFS... i think it marks a parting of the ways...
The CDC study is so exceptionally cynical... Getting their patients through a telephone survey to find almost normally functioning people who happen to be a bit tired and who fit into the CDC's CFS definition of choice... It's as cynical as you can hope to find in CFS research...
I think that this is a desperate attempt of the old school CDC to save face... and it might work for that purpose... but only that purpose, as far as i can see... And in the long run, I think that even this will back fire on them because they clearly are unable to detect XMRV. Period.
So what they have done is to recruit some tired people who clearly don't have ME, otherwise they would have been diagnosed with CFS by their family doctors...
Now the CDC can declare that the 'CFS' that they've always defined, and worked with, is different and separate to the 'cohorts' that the WPI is working with, which is normal CFS/ME, as we know it...
This allows them to save face by saying that there are different types of ME/CFS... different cohorts, or subsets, and that is why they never discovered XMRV in their cohorts.
So I believe that this might be the start of the journey where we all wave goodbye to the CFS label... which the old-school CDC employees can keep for themselves... and it's where we get a new illness called something like XAND, and we all get taken seriously.
Obviously this is a bit simplistic because not all of us are going to get tested XMRV +ve, but my own expectation is that a vast majority of us will turn out to be XMRV +ve... but i'm just guessing here.
I'm usually a massive cynic and a skeptic...
and I know that certain elements within the CDC would like to bury this XMRV research... And history tells us that the CDC is our enemy...
But this is bigger than the CDC now... in my opinion it's unstoppable... How can they bury a retro-virus in this day and age?! It would be like trying to cover up HIV. I think it would be impossible, especially in these times when we have the internet... news doesn't easily get buried.
Just my thoughts... I know not everyone shares my optimism.
UPDATE:
I've just read through another thread on this subject and I see that another poster expressed similar thoughts before I posted this message, so I'm giving a link to the other post:
http://www.forums.aboutmecfs.org/sh...Not-to-Find-XMRV&p=98840&viewfull=1#post98840