Definitely thought lines were being drawn but I thought Judy Mikovits handled herself superbly...I am convinced that the problems come from the various criteria under which they are diagnosing CFS/ME.
I thought Dr. Mikovits looked rather tired and frustrated, which is not at all surprising, but in spite of that she did indeed put up an amazing fight and held her corner in an environment in which she was at times almost a lone voice (amongst the scientists - she had big support in the audience and beyond the conference walls though!). Every challenge that was thrown at her, she had a simple and convincing response. As always. She is working so very hard for us all - I think (hope) that even those who have questions about the details can't fail to be massively impressed and grateful for everything she's doing.
And yes it's so obvious that the problems are caused
mainly by the criteria, however what has confounded this obvious truth from being clear to everyone is the additional complicating factor of the unforeseen methodological problem: the issues she says have been identified just in the last 2 weeks around the
collection and storage of samples. That this side was the major issue - and
not the need to culture cells prior to PCR - was actually made clear by Alter's analysis of the CDC samples. When his assay failed to find positives from the CDC samples, and showed a very weak 10% signal, those who realise that the whole cohort probably had no true CFS patients in it could also work out that there was an
additional problem in the way the samples were collected and stored: heperinized tubes impair the ability to detect. My guess is that the weak signal Alter found in the CDC samples is the remnant of the level of HMRVs in the general population.
The fact that these tubes are doing something to HMRVs, which nobody seems to have expected - even Mikovits herself didn't emphasise those points in her critique of the negative studies, emphasising instead the need to culture the virus - might point the way to potential treatments:
why are those samples being degraded by these methods?
Mikovits took every step necessary to get the results: belt, braces, and then some. She took every precaution to make sure it worked properly - and then when everybody else failed to replicate those meticulous methods (which would have taken years) nobody knew which of her steps was the one that was critical to success. But it does sound like we now have the answer: collection and storage of the samples.
There was further strongly suggestive evidence of this from the Kerr study, actually: remember that small group of about 25 samples from healthy controls that showed anomalous results with MLV antibodies? They all came from one area, and were written up as "oh, some kind of weird anomaly, probably means nothing...". But I thought at the time, and still do think, that there must have been some aspect of the collection/storage process that differed in those samples. I'd put my money on those being the only samples that used non-heperinized tubes and also were stored in the right way for the right length of time. And the precise details of exactly what's going on there will yield a great deal of information about HMRVs and what they need to survive in stable form.