Completely disagree with that view. With so little research funding available, that's precisely why it should go into more promising lines of research, some of which I outlined above, avenues that Gordon Broderick are taking, etc. Not wild goose chases for a retrovirus that almost no one but the original researchers can find.
It's not even a "view": the money that has gone in to researching XMRV is not ME/CFS money, never was, and never would have been. It would not have been spent on the research you describe anyway. Research funding in general is not little, and it is available - it's just not available to us.
So in essence it is really is either/or, b/c w/ so little out there, the more that goes to dubious XMRV claims the less that goes to the actual biological causes, the effects of which are already known to exist in patient after patient, replicated in study after study (NK function, cytotoxic function, TH1/TH2 imbalance, etc.)
If this were true, then there wouldn't be a problem in the first place, because money would have gone into those areas before XMRV was posited. It did not. Even the XMRV studies are a drop in the ocean compared to research into other conditions. There's no reason why XMRV research should be seen as a replacement for other research into ME/CFS. That hasn't been the reality. If research into XMRV stops, just watch the money pour in to fund other ME/CFS research - not.
I remember when the benevolent "molly" and her cohort (whose name I forget ATM) were here pushing stem cells: she was "cured" with them, she can get a "special rate," only $10,000, etc. I get the same feeling here. Someone's getting the money, and who is getting the results? No one in the CFS community that I can see...Sorry, but the entire thing seems like a scam to me. Maybe not originally intentional, but perhaps a little sketchy in its perpetuation.
I can't see the comparison here. What have people shelled out on XMRV? 200 or so on a test - repeated for free when the testing procedure was refined - all the proceeds (after costs) going into a non-profit fund to support the WPI's research into ME/CFS. Other than that, what? Many are supporting the WPI with donations - just as they have in the past supported other research with donations, also with little to show for it as yet. Not the same thing as the stem cell example at all.
I think when you draw these kind of comparisons you should step back and think about the actual money involved, and the actual constitution, personnel and mission of the WPI. Those sort of slurs were thrown around casually enough by Bad Scientists, we really don't need them from within our own ranks, and they are the sort of allegations that ought to be made with reference to numbers and facts, rather than in this vague sort of way. And the concept of a "scam" that wasn't originally intentional makes no sense at all to me: that's an inflammatory suggestion and a serious one, and you don't appear to have any evidence in support of it.