Nature: Spoonful of Medicine: There's no tiring of controversy in the XMRV-CFS link

[Angela Kennedy]

If you could cite your source it would be easier for me to read. I'm not sure what the copyright policy is here but on some forums if you quote something you need to cite the source. If this has been asked before and I missed it, someone let me know. Thanks!!

Isn't the Zhang paper currer just cited and posted a link to the source?

 

[currer]

Yep, Ange,

I put up a link to the Zhang et al paper in my previous post and all quotes are from that.

It is an extremely interesting paper, and not difficult to follow. I am glad we are discussing it here.

It is well worth a read.

It concludes "human cultures derived after mouse xenografting frequently contain and release highly infectious xenotropic MLV viruses. Laboratories working with xenograft-derived human cultures should be aware of the risk of contamination with potentially biohazardous human-tropic mouse viruses and their horizontal spread to other cultures."

I remember how the CROI researchers, after a little laugh at the wierd CFS patients, became really concerned once they realised they had been exposed to infectious MLVs from their cell lines, and anxiously discussed testing themselves.

 

[barbc56]

Yep, Ange,

I put up a link to the Zhang et al paper in my previous post and all quotes are from that.

It is an extremely interesting paper, and not difficult to follow. I am glad we are discussing it here.

It is well worth a read.

It concludes "human cultures derived after mouse xenografting frequently contain and release highly infectious xenotropic MLV viruses. Laboratories working with xenograft-derived human cultures should be aware of the risk of contamination with potentially biohazardous human-tropic mouse viruses and their horizontal spread to other cultures."

I remember how the CROI researchers, after a little laugh at the wierd CFS patients, became really concerned once they realised they had been exposed to infectious MLVs from their cell lines, and anxiously discussed testing themselves.

Thanks for the link.

Yes the threat of contamination is hard to control for. Horizontally as well as vertically. They can infect everything, however that does not make them harmful. It simply means they can spread.

The reason the researchers were concerned about the lab workers being contaminated was because of the threat of them contaminating the experiment. The spin from some in the cfs/me community was that they were afraid of catching the virus. Hardly laughing at the me/cfs community.

Amazing how reality is 90% perception. :>)

 

[barbc56]

I have emailed Dr. Singh and hopefully will get an answer about her take on XMRV/HGRVs associated with prostate cancer. Sometimes , you have to go to the source.

I am very curious to see what she has to say.

 

[currer]

Hi Barb

Sorry to the older forum members as I know this is old news for us...but...the relvant discussion is in this transcript,, starting with Mike Busch's comment.

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150117723456797

They discuss getting themselves tested for exposure to this retrovirus.
It is clear it is not their experiments they are concerned about.

Prior to this discussion, which was the closing one, there were some dismissive comments about the ME community from a female speaker which led to laughter among the audience.
Some people on this forum were upset by her comments. Cort, I remember was particularly angry.
At the time members of this forum pointed out the contradictory attitude they had to the threat to their own health as opposed to the complacency with which they contemplated our risk.

The forum archive will take you there if you want to check it out.

I watched the CROI conference when it was broadcast, have watched it on other occasions since, and I know and still remember what happened. It did not happen as you maintain. Last time I looked, the video of these discussions was still available if you want to watch it.

XMRV seems to be particularly well adapted to infecting human cell lines.
The concern of the virologists shows they are uncertain of its pathologic potential in real live humans.

I hope you get an answer from Dr Singh as I share your curiosity.
I notice Silverman has recently published another research paper on XMRV, but this research does not extend to the question of whether XMRV is in fact found as a human infection in the population.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042682211004375

 

[barbc56]

I have read this before and just read it again and wonder how people can interpret this as meaning researchers are scared of getting XMRV. They are using the term infectious as a contaminant which is how XMRV acts. It's everywhere. It spreads. It infects but it's harmless.

Therefore if a lab worker tested positive without taking precautions it could mess up the experiments.

The woman speaker was heckled. Not only very unprofessional by people in our community to do this because someone has a different opinion but we complain about people disrespecting us, and it does happen, but to turn around and do the same thing is not acceptable, reflects poorly on our community and means we have sunk to the same levle. Doesn't mean to never have an opinion but sometimes you have to pick your battles and debate the issues and not the person.

Once again this is an old stale argument used again and again to hold on to a theory that science isn't backing with a bit of conspiracy theory thrown in.

I know this won't change your mind and that's not why I am posting. But if people reading this want to know what is really going on it's important to bring up these points and not just by me. There are a lot of other people here and other places saying the same thing.

Perception again.



ETA

I notice Silverman has recently published another research paper on XMRV, but this research does not extend to the question of whether XMRV is in fact found as a human infection in the population.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...42682211004375

This study was discussed on another thread. I am having a hard time trying to keep all of these threads straight. :>)

Please see:

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/showthread.php?14194-In-vivo-hypermutation-of-XMRV-in-rhesus-macaque-by-APOBEC3-proteins&p=212967#post212967

 

[Bob]

... we complain about people disrespecting us, and it does happen, but to turn around and do the same thing is not acceptable, reflects poorly on our community and means we have sunk to the same levle. Doesn't mean to never have an opinion but sometimes you have to pick your battles and debate the issues and not the person.

Sometimes it helps to know who you are dealing with when debating the issues, and to understand an individual's motivations. It helps, for example, to have insight into the movitations of people like Simon Wessely, so that one knows not to take his work at face value. I do agree though that it is usually more productive to fight an issue, and not a person.

I'm not sure how the quote above is consistent with the following:

... The "other forum" is full of people who have no idea what science is and are grasping at straws to hold on to a belief that has been disproved. Their leader is a pseudoscientiest and the forum members follow him like Jesus, practically licking his feet. He knows a little about a lot and that is a dangerous combination.

As far as the WPI and the behavior of Judy Mikovitz with her pit bull mentality of I am right and everyone else is wrong, it's disgusting. Excuse me, who died and appointed her Queen? She is not only the epitome of unprofessionalism but also doesn't understand how Science works.

http://phoenixrising.me/forums/show...ming-out-today&p=207091&viewfull=1#post207091

 

[barbc56]

Double posted. Oopsy.

 

[barbc56]

I do agree though that it is usually more productive to fight an issue, and not a person.

I must be your issue because of my evul opinions, eh?

 

[Angela Kennedy]

I must be your issue because of my evul opinions, eh?

I think Bob merely showed your inconsistency here, which is nevertheless highly important because you've been preaching at people.

This poor beleagured community gets the old "you are all evul and meanies" on a regular basis. But it usually- always I'd say- comes from those who do not practice what they preach in terms of 'civility'.

That's an important issue needs addressing.

 

[currer]

I am very interested to see what Dr. Singh's attitude is at the moment because the prostate cancer research really is linked to the ME research.

If Dr. Singh stands by her PC research, it means that HGRVs are in the population.

This will not show, of course, that they are necessarily in ME, but it means that statements such as "HGRVs do not exist", which I seem to remember was said at the BWG seminar, cannot be made.

 

[Bob]

If published research results are demonstrated to be purely a result of contamination, does anyone know if published papers are generally retracted?

 

[barbc56]

Here's a source I put on another thread about the disparity how journal articles are retracted. It doesn't look like there's any universal criteria but mostly differs by Journal and even then it isn't clear.

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/showthread.php?14138-The-Race-to-Retract-Lombardi-2009.../page13

 

[barbc56]

Bob/Angela

I was asked to edit my post when I first wrote it. Fair is fair and I did that. My bad. If you have any problems with my posts please feel free to hit the "report post" button.

Thanks.

 

[justinreilly]

Yes the threat of contamination is hard to control for. Horizontally as well as vertically. They can infect everything, however that does not make them harmful. It simply means they can spread.

The reason the researchers were concerned about the lab workers being contaminated was because of the threat of them contaminating the experiment. The spin from some in the cfs/me community was that they were afraid of catching the virus. Hardly laughing at the me/cfs community.

Amazing how reality is 90% perception. :>)

If they weren't concerned for their own health, then they are pretty dumb. MLVs have been proven to cause astronomically high rates of cancer in HUMANS, albeit humans who, at the time of insertion (but not afterwards) had non-functioning immune systems. An extremely high proportion of the 'bubble boy' patients who recieved MLV gene-therapy later got the same cancer. It was also proven in the literature which exact mechanism (where in the host genome) the MLVs caused the cancer by. This is all totally accepted 100% by mainstream science.

ERV even blogged about one of the cohorts:

http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2010/08/gene_therapy_and_x-linked_scid.php

Take bone marrow cells from the kid, treat them with a MLV-gene therapy vector containing a functional copy of the gene these kids need. And YAY! Cured kids!

They tried this on nine babies. Babies. About seven months old :-/

And four of them got cancer, because thats kinda what retroviruses do. When you randomly insert into a genome enough times, you are eventually plop into a tumor suppressor, or right upstream of an oncogene.

And one of those kids died.

So this kind of gene therapy was shut down. Immediately. Cant be givin babies cancer.

 

[currer]

Here's a source I put on another thread about the disparity how journal articles are retracted. It doesn't look like there's any universal criteria but mostly differs by Journal and even then it isn't clear.

http://forums.phoenixrising.me/showthread.php?14138-The-Race-to-Retract-Lombardi-2009.../page13

Thanks for putting this up, Barb.

It was very interesting.

 

[Firestormm]

I am very interested to see what Singh's attitude is at the moment because the prostate cancer research really is linked to the ME research.

If Singh now feels her PC research is discredited and invalid, her paper should also be retracted if the call to retract the Lombardi paper be fair and just.

On the other hand, if Singh stands by her PC research, it means that HGRVs are in the population.

This will not show, of course, that they are necessarily in ME, but it means that statements such as "HGRVs do not exist", which I seem to remember was said at the BWG seminar, cannot be made.

I know it isn't Singh but here was a paper published last week: No detection of XMRV in blood samples and tissue sections from prostate cancer patients in northern Europe

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0025592

'We were unable to conclusively detect XMRV in the blood from PCA patients or from healthy controls and there is no conclusive evidence of XMRV protein expression in PCA, breast cancer and colon cancer tissue sections tested by IHC staining.'

Any use to you Currer?

 

[barbc56]

I know it isn't Singh but here was a paper published last week: No detection of XMRV in blood samples and tissue sections from prostate cancer patients in northern Europe

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0025592

'We were unable to conclusively detect XMRV in the blood from PCA patients or from healthy controls and there is no conclusive evidence of XMRV protein expression in PCA, breast cancer and colon cancer tissue sections tested by IHC staining.'

Any use to you Currer?

This and the fact that the NCI has said they are not associated with prostate cancer.

The email address for Singh bounced back. Does anyone happen to have this?

Thanks.

 

[Jemal]

The email address for Singh bounced back.

Let's hope she didn't make a run for it

 

[barbc56]

Dr. Singh made a presentation "XMRV and its Role in Human Disease" at the ICAAC: 51st Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

Unfortunately, you can't access her presentation. (Why????)

I am still investigating and there is a very slight chance I know someone who went to this conference. I am keeping my finger's crossed on this. If he didn't go he may have access to what she said.

Here's Vincent Racaniello"s TWIV recorded at the conference. I have not had a chance to look at it at this time.

http://www.twiv.tv/2011/09/18/twiv-149-live-at-icaac-in-the-windy-city/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+twivmp3+%28This+Week+in+Virology+-+MP3+Edition%29

Scroll down the page if you want to see the video instead of the podcast.