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Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of, and finding treatments for, complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia, long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.
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Test 9: Consistent Results Across the Positive Tests - the percent of positive results (from 50-80%) for people with CFS and healthy controls (4-8%) has been remained roughly consistent across the studies. Furthermore, it has dropped when in less rigorously defined groups (VIP Dx - @50%) and increased in more rigorously defined groups - as would be expected. As noted, the antibody tests have shown similar results.
It's going to be pretty difficult to chalk up the positive results to mouse contamination if they can't find XMRV in mice (which no one has, so far).
It's going to be pretty difficult to chalk up the positive results to mouse contamination if they can't find XMRV in mice (which no one has, so far).
There are going be some serious losers for sure.)
Have they really rejected 6 WPI grant proposals? I had no idea it was that many and I assume that many of them got in there before the Weiss paper came out....that's really something. .... I don't think it has to do with the negative studies....it's something else. Dr. Singh, Dr. Hansen and Dr. Lipkin have all gotten grants.
The good news to all this is that the Dr. Mikovits is part of the BWG and she seems OK with what's going there so far. Indeed, she seems quite confident - as always . What a year its been!
The paper by Lo and colleagues in PNAS claims an association between a retrovirus of mice and human chronic fatigue syndrome. It is based on small numbers but it will provoke discussion. Let's hope it is not another claim like MMR and autism which didn't hold up, but I am sceptical of the claim. Different primers were used for the CFS samples and the controls in Figure 1 and the analysis does not appear to have been performed using blinded samples. Remarkably, the mouse retrovirus is not the same as the one linked to CFS in a report published last year. One should also bear in mind that no less than 4 negative reports on this topic (failing to find a retrovirus link) have been published this year from reputable scientific groups in the UK, The Netherlands and at the Center for Communicable Diseases & Prevention in Atlanta, USA.
Let's hope it is not another claim like MMR and autism which didn't hold up...
We are getting an education regarding which researchers are actually thinking, and which are operating by conditioned response.
Weiss is a loose cannon, imo. Here is his response to the Lo/Alter paper, issued by the UK Science Media Centre (SMC), an indepedent organisation that appears to have no controlling body.
http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/pages/press_releases/10-08-23_cfs_virus_pnas.htm
We all could drive a London bus through every one of these sentences but, sadly, the UK media (which the SMC briefs) can not.
And one particular sentence (below) could be read as a (not so) veiled warning to the UK media not to 'touch this one with a barge pole, lads'. What relevance at all does this have to a press release about XMRV unless it is simply to make such a point?
I would also ask why Judy has 500 isolates and no funds to sequence them. Was this not to be completed using the $1.6m grant from the NIH? Did this get pulled because the co-recipient, Dr Jonathon Kerr, was co-author of the second failed UK study and subsequently decided to withdraw from ME research?
If so, the UK scientists (yet again) have got a lot to answer for.
Has Dr. Kerr actually decided to withdraw from ME research? I hope not - he did some pretty compelling research.