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Nature article about Judy Mikovits and XMRV

Jemal

Senior Member
Messages
1,031
Nature has published a lengthy article about Judy Mikovits and some of the history of XMRV:

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110314/full/471282a.html

And Phoenix Rising is mentioned :)

Also best quotes from the article:

Contamination became a dirty word for Mikovits.

and

Mikovits is riled when the topic turns to Towers's paper over dinner one night in Reno — "Christmas garbage", she calls it. Contamination cannot explain why her team can reproduce its results both in her lab in Reno and at Ruscetti's at the NCI, she says. Her team checks for contamination in reagents and in the cells it grows the patients' samples with. She says that her team has also collected viral sequences that will address Towers's and Kellam's criticism but that it hasn't yet been able to publish them. Meanwhile, an unpublished study of patients in Britain with chronic fatigue bears out the link to XMRV, she says. "I haven't for one second seen a piece of data that convinced me they're not infected."

Unfortunately there's some scary stuff also:

Jay Levy, a virologist at the Univer*sity of California, San Francisco, has a window in his closet-sized office that looks out into the laboratory where, in the 1980s, he became one of the first scientists to isolate HIV. After his discovery was scooped by other researchers, Levy turned his attention to chronic fatigue and started a long but fruitless search for an infectious cause.

Now, Levy is putting the finishing touches on what could be the most thorough response yet to Mikovits's Science paper, adopting the same cell-culture techniques to detect the virus and using samples from the same patients. He's done this with the help of Daniel Peterson, who left the WPI in 2010 for what Peterson says are "personal reasons". Peterson has questioned the institute's singular pursuit of XMRV, a research direction that was pursued without his consultation.

Mikovits says that she kept the XMRV work secret from Peterson over fears he would tell his patients, and left his name off the original Science manuscript until a reviewer questioned the omission. When asked whether that episode contributed to his departure, he says, "I was surprised at the secrecy and lack of collaboration." As for his motivation to team up with Levy: "I'm just trying to get to the truth. It's my only motive, because this is such a deserving group of patients who need to know what's going on."

and:

Silverman, who no longer works with Mikovits, says that he wasn't using 22Rv1 cells when XMRV was discovered. Nonetheless, the work has rattled his confidence in XMRV's link to both prostate cancer and chronic fatigue.
 

Jemal

Senior Member
Messages
1,031
This is a pretty huge article I think... not only in words, but also because it reveals some information I have been wondering about. Why Peterson left the WPI for example.

Having read the article, I am left with the feeling that Mikovits is losing allies and I am losing some confidence that XMRV is the potential cause of XMRV. I still think the connection is there though, but I guess we'll find out (soon hopefully).
 

bertiedog

Senior Member
Messages
1,738
Location
South East England, UK
I thought this article seemed to sum up the complex situation in a balanced way. I hope Judy can publish soon to stop the contamination issue for once and for all.
 

Jemal

Senior Member
Messages
1,031
I thought this article seemed to sum up the complex situation in a balanced way. I hope Judy can publish soon to stop the contamination issue for once and for all.

Yeah, it's pretty balanced I think!
Not sure if a publication by Judy will stop the contamination issues. Other researchers should validate her findings, that's how it's done in science. Also she has become pretty controversial I am afraid, so the stuff she publishes from now on will be looked at very differently...

(I am still very glad she's doing this research for us by the way, she has stuck her neck out).
 

CBS

Senior Member
Messages
1,522
Mikovits says that she kept the XMRV work secret from Peterson over fears he would tell his patients, and left his name off the original Science manuscript until a reviewer questioned the omission. When asked whether that episode contributed to his departure, he says, I was surprised at the secrecy and lack of collaboration. As for his motivation to team up with Levy: Im just trying to get to the truth. Its my only motive, because this is such a deserving group of patients who need to know whats going on.

Not cool and definitely not cool!
Retro%20cool.gif


Peterson was a founding contributor, the clinical director. The building has his name on it. Nothing would have gotten off of the ground without his patients or his efforts. Ouch!!!

This article explains quite a bit.

I wish Peterson the very best of luck with Levy.
 
Messages
13,774
Thanks for that.

I'm really keen to see a proper response from Silverman to the contamination stuff.
 

LJS

Luke
Messages
213
Location
East Coast, USA
Not cool and definitely not cool!
Retro%20cool.gif


Peterson was a founding contributor, the clinical director. The building has his name on it. Nothing would have gotten off of the ground without his patients or his efforts. Ouch!!!

This article explains quite a bit.

I wish Peterson the very best of luck with Levy.

Yea, seriously not cool and childish. The more I hear of things she has done or says the more I do not like her or believe her work. It is absolutely unexceptionable not to tell Peterson and if I was him I would have left too.

Many patients have made the same criticisms of the authors of the negative papers; that they had to big of a ego, doing things in their own interest, and were overstepping the science. All along she has been doing and saying the same thing. The more I hear about her actions the more respect I loose of her.
 
Messages
13,774
It's really hard to judge someone's personality from little scraps like this. Best to just focus on the evidence imo - if XMRV works out, none of us will care about how secretive they were when they started looking in to it. It was when the WPI was just starting up too... who knows what state they were in.
 

Enid

Senior Member
Messages
3,309
Location
UK
Thanks Cort - the whole history in this important publication. Much hope the politics will go away very very shortly. Personally cannot believe XMRV/related is not part of the complex interactions - puppet or puppeteer - only she and her co-researchers will find. The behaviour of the rest of the "scientific community" just sickens - almost too eager to dispel and very few recognising the advances in understanding the disease.
 

Dreambirdie

work in progress
Messages
5,569
Location
N. California
Not cool and definitely not cool!
Retro%20cool.gif


Peterson was a founding contributor, the clinical director. The building has his name on it. Nothing would have gotten off of the ground without his patients or his efforts. Ouch!!!

A BIG OUCH for Peterson! No wonder he split like he did. I would be hurt and miffed too, if someone did that to me.

Still I wonder... what was JM thinking? And what was her relationship like with Peterson that motivated her to be so secretive... ???

Only those two real know what the hell was going on with all that, and I'm sure there's more to the story than what was revealed in the article.

Whenever strong personalities meet, (and BOTH of those two fit that description), there is always bound to be some kind of drama.
 

Jemal

Senior Member
Messages
1,031
So why do I have the feeling that the replication study by Levy and Peterson is not going to validate the findings of the original study? I get that feeling from reading this article... the wording suggests to me that it won't be a positive study. Things like:

After his discovery was scooped by other researchers, Levy turned his attention to chronic fatigue and started a long but fruitless search for an infectious cause.

and directly after that:

Now, Levy is putting the finishing touches on what could be the most thorough response yet to Mikovits's Science paper, adopting the same cell-culture techniques to detect the virus and using samples from the same patients.

Somehow these parts suggest to me the study will be a negative?

Also the fact that Peterson left the WPI, because he felt it was too focused on XMRV contributes to this feeling...

Hopefully I am reading too much into this.
 

George

waitin' fer rabbits
Messages
853
Location
South Texas
I would like to know where the author got these quotes? Most of it sounds as if it was gleaned from secondary sources such as talks posted on line, diffrent people that Mikovits has talked to over the last year and other articles. This does not read as if this author actually talked to Dr. Mikovits over the space of time indicated in the article.

Personally I find the article snarky and laden with innuendo. (big shrugs)
 

Otis

Señor Mumbler
Messages
1,117
Location
USA
Yet new work presented at a different meeting that found XMRV using next-generation DNA sequencing offers "no doubt it's not contamination — that the whole story's real", she says.

Do we have a hint as to what study this refers to? I swear, if I read "chronic fatigue" one more time today I think my head's going to split open.
 

SOC

Senior Member
Messages
7,849
Did they add to this article since this morning? There are a number of paragraphs I don't remember seeing in my first reading. Maybe I was dozing off....?
 

SpecialK82

Ohio, USA
Messages
993
Location
Ohio, USA
So much in this article, overall it was very good, just wish they would stop using the name "chronic fatigue" especially in lowercase.

I'm still saddened that Peterson left the WPI, both sides have been such heros for us.

I've been wondering what Mikovits was referring to when she said " I think the politics will go away shortly" in her Jan 2011 speech in Santa Rosa. Maybe it's the Levy study. Anyone know when completion is expected?
 

Jemal

Senior Member
Messages
1,031
Did they add to this article since this morning? There are a number of paragraphs I don't remember seeing in my first reading. Maybe I was dozing off....?

I don't think so, unless I was dozing off myself :D