Introduction:
Hello viewer,
A few days after the Leuven symposium there was a similar symposium at the VUB (university of Brussels), organised by THE authority on CVS in Belgium and the Netherlands: professor Kenny de Meirleir. We asked him if any political games are being played in this case.
Interviewer: Professor de Meirleir, last week on Monday there was a press conference at the KU Leuven, claiming that the XRMV research was taken down. In the evening, professor Van Weyenbergh nuanced this conclusion, and now you are having a symposium here at the VUB. What can we conclude out of this? Is there a political game being played?
DML: This symposium was already planned for a long time, not last week. There are no games being played. A good discussion took place in Leuven, at international level with many scientists. And at this moment it's a .. (French word I think, I can't hear what he's saying.. I think he means a deadlock or something). There are as many people who found positive result, but who didn't publish as much as a number of eight negative studies that didn't find anything.
Interviewer: In the patient community, tensions are high. Isn't it time that this is relativized?
DML: Yes this can be relativized, in that people should have some more patience, at least three more years, before we'll have a full picture of the role of this virus in the disease. This can eventually happen to be a "bystander" or have a role at the basis, that's something we don't know at this moment. But that doesn't mean we can't do full scale research, screening and so on.
Interviewer: Is that what you are doing, here at the VUB?
DML: Yes we're working on that.
Interviewer: Can you already conclude something?
DML: We have waited to publish to eventually confirm and re-confirm as many things, for example taking multiple samples in the same people, and to try and re-confirm things. I think in the second half of this year we'll have a number of publications about this, but I rather not say much about that today.
Interviewer: Science is also a little bit of politics and that game isn't always played fair. We have found that a authors of the second paper was an ex-employee of the Whittemore Institute. Is this true?
DML: That is correct, but I don't know anymore about that. I don't know those internal politics and we don't talk about that.
Interviewer: Thank you professor.