Nice letter.
I doubt we'll ever really know exactly what happened....and really everybody could be right - it could be a combination of things - problems within the WPI, a desire to stick to his own practice,.....We don't know what Dr. Peterson's plans at the WPI were anyway ....was he going to close his practice of 25 years and move to Reno? (Very possibly not). Was he going to be there part time? Very possibly so. How was this going to work out? .....These things were presumably worked out to his satisfaction before he took the Medical Director position but there is so much we don't know ......
In any case, while Dr. Peterson does not wish to be officially associated with the WPI anymore, he's leaving quietly.... he doesn't want to hurt their efforts and he wishes them good will and good luck and I think we (I
) should respect that and support them both. He wants it to be a quiet transition and I think we (I
) should support that. They both need support in a difficult field.
I think XMRV's fate. up or down, has really been mostly out of the hands of the WPI for quite awhile now. They started the ball rolling - and now its fate is in the hands of the many labs and excellent researchers outside the WPI who are studying it. I can't imagine that his leaving, while, on the face of it, not a positive thing for the WPI, will effect the outcome of the XMRV discovery in the slightest.