Science does move painfully slow sometimes and has moved far too slow for CFS. We all want it to go faster but I feel things are falling into place now and we should get solid answers on XMRV once the the Singh and Lipkin study are finished. If both studies come back positive you will see a huge boost in the amount of resorces and speed of development of XMRV and CFS research.
Agree with this. Things are moving into place. Don't know is XMRV is the cause of our problems, but do know it is the most likely candidate I have seen in my time being sick, by a long way. Since I saw the video of Singh's talk, and also learned that the Lipkin study will be using the Fukuda and Canadian definitions, I have become a lot more confident they will find something.
I also know that while science (and certainly the politics surrounding it) can move painfully slowly, and that we have paid a terrible price for that, I still would much prefer they took a little longer and got the answer on XMRV right.
Actually, I think things are moving at a reasonable pace, considering what is at stake. This issue goes way past ME/CFS patients, it is potentially one of the most serious disease factors in human history. For everybody's sake, including ours, we must allow the basic science of XMRV (et al) to be firmly established. We must be able to clearly define and detect the relevant organism(s), before we can do anything else, including serious clinical trials.
XMRV was first identified in 2006. In late 2009, just over a year ago, the first paper associating XMRV with ME/CFS was published (Mikovits/Lombardi). We now have serious scientific attention and some the world's best virologists on the case. By the end of next year the XMRV situation should be pretty clear, one way or another, and if XMRV is 'it', then we will be into serious clinical trials. That is quite fast for dealing a serious medical scientific problem (XMRV). I got no complaints about the speed research is progressing on XMRV, especially relative to how fast it was progressing before XMRV came along.
I am all for closely watching the scientific and political process, and letting it be clearly known that we are doing so, and will hold people accountable for their technical and ethical failures. But any further than that right now (re XMRV stuff) is premature.
There are a lot of goodwill points for us to earn here if we play our cards in a relatively restrained manner, and give the scientific process on XMRV a chance.