OK, I have fun with my rants, but here are some more "guts"... Nah - I've first gotta do a mini-rant.
Re: Wesseley isn't stupid
It would be so incredibly stupid of Wesseley to use a radical redefinition of CFS for this study, that I'm assuming this is not the case for now.
With all due respect, this assumption needs to be re-evaluated (I'm trying to be gentle here). Fuzzifying the CFS definition is the very
modus operandus, the very essence of Reeves and Wesseley's "science", and has been for YEARS! This forum is a fabulous place in which to educate oneself about the differences between Canadian, Fukuda, Oxford, etc criteria. Mice can be fuzzy. GOOD science can't, and that includes cohort definitions. Or perhaps to make things a little clearer, if your cohorts and PCR assays aren't comparable, it's like comparing these guys...
Bottom line, I have yet to see an iota of evidence that Wesseley
et al used the same cohort as the Science researchers - i.e. Canadian and Fukuda. Disqualifying patients with any sign of organic illness is a red flag that this is neither a replication study, nor a credible scientific enquiry into ME/CFS. C'mon. What kind of credible and unbiased researcher capriciously and arbitrarily decides that people with a given condition - in this case ME/CFS - can't have organic symptoms? That's a market segmentation ploy, not science.
I'm reminded of that great image in Raiders of the Lost Arc, when Harrison Ford is confronted by a sword-wielding opponent. Ford finally gets sick of the spectacle - theoretically impressive tho it is... the optics are admirable - and just shoots the irritant. NO, I'm not advocating violence. But I am suggesting that some metaphorical purging of unscientific nonsense is necessary.
Re: Mouse contamination
Hasn't that already been put to rest by more credible scientists? Please revisit Peterson's comments:
Phylogenetics - With XMRV it was important to differentiate it from all the other mouse retroviruses that are in the family of the gamma retroviruses. And this phylogenetic tree that was developed by gene-sequencing, demonstrated that this particular XMRV that we isolated from the Chronic fatigue patients was similar to, but not identical to, the XMRV that has been demonstrated in patients with prostate cancer, which are represented by the VP62 & VP25. Youll also note that phylogenetically this particular group of XMRV is quite disparate from the mouse retroviruses. What this means somewhat simplistically is that theres been a genetic deviation from the other mouse retroviruses making it very extremely unlikely that this represents mouse contamination in a laboratory. Secondly you will see that there is genetic differences in the strains that have been sequenced, which is what one would expect from retroviruses that arise in different locations and in different infections.
Comparability of assays: A KEY issue!
And finally, it is essential for us, as additional research comes out, to rigorously evaluate how comparable PCR assays were.
It is a well known reality that PCR assays can be highly variable from one research facility to another. The viral myocarditis research is a great example of this, and if you take a time-lapse view of PubMed, you'll often find the very same cardiologists first saying, "No, we aren't finding any Virus X", then a couple of years later saying, "Yup, we changed our PCR assays, and we found Virus X".
It's not until the "guts" of these assays are evaluated that we can determine whether in fact the study truly replicated the Science study. As Dr Coffin noted in his CFSAC testimony:
"Its very important that we have standardized, uniform, well validated and reliable assays. This is really the critical issue here. And immunological assays are particularly difficult in this case."
Now what I'd LOVE to hear would be some intelligent, fact-based commentary from credible scientists such as Dr Coffin, on comparability of assays, etc in this latest Wesseley "piece of work"! Anyone have an "in" with Dr Coffin?:Retro smile: