New WPI and CDC XMRV sequences in genbank

[jace]

Thanks, Mark. I'm reading more than posting these days, but I'm always grateful for your views.

BarbC said

Really? I find this statement puzzling. Virology has helped us conquer polio as well as other diseases. Do you want to go back to those times? I have two friends who contacted polio when I was growing up. One died. The other has post polio syndrome. Even though I was very young at the time, I remember having to stay inside, the pools closing down. I would think many here would be too young to remember this, but it was scary.

I wonder if you know any severe ME patients, BarbC. This is also a very scary illness, and the worst thing is, for some the suffering only ends when they (sometimes with help) take their own lives because they cannot bear it any more, with no cure or end in sight.

I am old enough to remember how polio affected society, and have one friend who survived, with withered legs. He went on to have a successful career and full health, apart from the damage to his legs. There are many people with ME who have been seriously ill for decades, with no hope of recovery.

 

[currer]

Barb,

I remember polio too. It was not a casual comparison.

Thanks, Mark. I'm reading more than posting these days, but I'm always grateful for your views.

BarbC said


I wonder if you know any severe ME patients, BarbC. This is also a very scary illness, and the worst thing is, for some the suffering only ends when they (sometimes with help) take their own lives because they cannot bear it any more, with no cure or end in sight.

I am old enough to remember how polio affected society, and have one friend who survived, with withered legs. He went on to have a successful career and full health, apart from the damage to his legs. There are many people with ME who have been seriously ill for decades, with no hope of recovery.

 

[currer]

Bulybeef, I am sure that political and cost considerations come into the debate on HGRVs all the time - you are right.

On that note, I am trying to find out about rates of disease that are associated with HGRVs (potentially)

But would you guess, no statistics seem to be collected. We are used to there being no statistics on the numbers of people with ME, but is also seems to be the case for Parkinsons and MS.

Cancer statistics can be found, but not chronic disease. Why? i would have thought this one of the obvious duties of government. How would you know whether disease patterns were changing over time otherwise?

This begs the question - do our governments want to know these facts? Or is it easier to ignore if no inconvenient statistics exist. Much easier to pronounce that the numbers of disabled are too high, if you dont look for any underlying cause.
Cutting benefits and denial of illness is the way - healthcare is a COST to govt.

I'll start a thread on this topic as it is off topic here.

 

[RRM]

If it were the case that illnesses such as those we suffer from really are the lesser of two evils in the global fight against human disease, then actually, I could accept that - provided that our collateral damage were recognised and compensated just as it is for the rest of society. But we are being swept under the carpet, and our experience makes it quite clear that there really isn't any serious attempt to investigate what is going on with us: on the basis of that shared experience alone, we can be confident that there are dangers here that are certainly not being taken seriously enough, whether those dangers are indeed related to these novel retroviruses or to something else. And the reason for all the furore is obvious enough: these retroviral theories are (from what I have seen) the best general explanatory model yet advanced for the cause of the illnesses we are all suffering from.

Although I agree that ME/CFS is heavily underfunded, I would not classify it as some kind of "collateral damage" of some kind of scientific research program based on the available evidence.

And while the are indeed risks attached to using mice (or macaques) in medical research, the question really must be if these are acceptable risks. Risks apply not only to medical research, but a lot (all?) of human development is inherently tied to some kind of unknown risk. Perhaps mobile phones have a slow but extremely damaging effect on humans in the long run, and/or perhaps the same goes for WiFi signals. To avoid these kinds of risks, we'd have to stop progress altogether. For instance, we could pretty easily stop (most of) the threat of the quick spread of a new HIV-like virus, by stopping all travel/tourism. We just don't think it is worth that (despite the fact that we could potentially save millions of lives by doing so).

The thing is, risk assessment is sometimes not very rational. For instance, many people rather take the car than travel by plane (if possible), although flying is much safer than driving. In the same vein, a deadly virus accidentally created in the laboratory is much more fear-inducing than the thought that your neighbour picked up a deadly new virus while on vacation in Africa - probably because we get exposed all the time to people that have been on vacation without anything happening after that.

As it is, despite the rather weird side effect of getting some cell lines infected with MLV's, I don't see any major problems with this line of research. There is really no evidence that (for instance) xenografting has caused any damage to the general human population thus far. The only credible evidence that it could, is the fact that some cell lines have become infected but, as Sam Carter already said, there is a big difference between a virus being able to infect a human cell line and a virus being able to (effectively) infect a human person.

Of course, the finding of these viruses in humans, in a consistent and reproducible manner, could change all this, but the same really applies to (for instance) WiFi signals or any other human development that we consider to be safe at the moment.

Oh, and thumbs up for your other, more recent post.

 

[alex3619]

If the majority of Europe and North America have private healthcare and welfare systems, so in some way, a global plague could be accepted eventually, but what happens when a country has a "free" healthcare/welfare system or a National Health Service?

Would this cause relationship problems for countries on opposing sides of eventual acceptance based upon their healthcare and welfare systems?

Or should a new human retrovirus be accepted by some countries, could this cause the likes of the UK attempt to say it doesn't travel like HTLV to avoid monetary cost to treat the potentially infected?

Hi bullybeef, I think there are two issues here. First, some might very well see it this way. These sorts of claims are made by all sorts of people, especially those who are in charge of spending this money.

However, as the AIDS crisis in the US showed, if you rely on private insurance you just infect more and more people in the insured system. So even if you contain costs initially, you wind up paying for it anyway in the long run, and at the expense of a lot of people dying of it eventually. In the case of AIDS the eye-opener was a lot of healthy people suddenly coming down with TB in New York (City? I dont recall that detail.) The AIDS patients became carriers for many diseases, some of which were much more easily transmitted than HIV. Bye, Alex

 

[alex3619]

Cancer statistics can be found, but not chronic disease. Why? i would have thought this one of the obvious duties of government. How would you know whether disease patterns were changing over time otherwise? This begs the question - do our governments want to know these facts? Or is it easier to ignore if no inconvenient statistics exist. Much easier to pronounce that the numbers of disabled are too high, if you dont look for any underlying cause. Cutting benefits and denial of illness is the way - healthcare is a COST to govt.

Hi currer, I might be able to bring some light to this topic. Data is held. Its not held by governments. Its held by insurance companies, and it scares them. The increase in CFS related claims scared the hell out of them in the 90s. This is why some claim they have an agenda to make ME a non-disease. I don't want to go into that right now, but it certainly shows why they might be scared to do proper epidemiological studies: if some of these diseases (and it might not be ME) are really on a rapid increase, and the public gets wind that they have ignored it, they could be in trouble. So the strategy could be, just maybe, that they are trying to keep a lid on it for as long as possible. The people who know are not governments but the insurance industry.

Bye, Alex

 

[barbc56]

Just the facts!!

I was accused of comparing polio to me/cfs. What really happened was I was answering the following question from post #190

I have to admit to some serious doubts about virology as a profession, too - they experiment on animals, create unnatural and lethal viruses which can earn them millions, many work in secret biological/bioweapons research, treat the public with disdain and suspicion...how right or ethical is this? And can we really assume that "good" can result from such activities - is it even right to benefit from technologies developed in such ways?

My answer to the question about virology as a profession on post #192 was:

Really? I find this statement puzzling. Virology has helped us conquer polio as well as other diseases. Do you want to go back to those times? I have two friends who contacted polio when I was growing up. One died. The other has post polio syndrome. Even though I was very young at the time, I remember having to stay inside, the pools closing down. I would think many here would be too young to remember this, but it was scary.

I was in no way comparing polio and me/cfs. I was giving an example how virologist have been helpful. A closer reading of my response to the question would have shown this and make this post not necessaryl

I wonder if you know any severe ME patients, BarbC. This is also a very scary illness, and the worst thing is, for some the suffering only ends when they (sometimes with help) take their own lives because they cannot bear it any more, with no cure or end in sight.

I am old enough to remember how polio affected society, and have one friend who survived, with withered legs. He went on to have a successful career and full health, apart from the damage to his legs. There are many people with ME who have been seriously ill for decades, with no hope of recovery.

Yes I know someone with severe ME. Myself. Personally, I would never ask a anyone this type of question, but I can only speak for myself.

The meme continues in post # 202:

Barb,

I remember polio too. It was not a casual comparison.

I think it would make for a better atmosphere if people take a deep breath before reacting to the messenger and stick with the content of the message so there is no miscommunication. We are all human and not well, so it's understandable when this sometimes happens.

This is how rumors get started which eventually become accepted as fact.

Am I angry. No, I don't anger nor get intimidated easily. Nor do I take things like this personally. It's the person who writes these type of posts problem. Will this stop me from posting. Absolutely not!! That being said it does get rather tiring and doesn't give this forum the best image and Phoenix Rising , IMHO is a great place.
Barb C. :>)

Mods. feel free to delete this post. It is only my intention to point out a problem here and while I realize this is not my job, maybe this example will make people stop and think a bit before responding and that includes me.

 

[Bob]

... Will this stop me from posting. Absolutely not!! That being said it does get rather tiring and doesn't give this forum the best image and Phoenix Rising , IMHO is a great place.
Barb C. :>)

I just want to make a quick point.

Both sides of the XMRV debate clearly get frustrated at times.
I suppose this is to be expected.
I think that all we can do, as members of the forum, is to try to be as respectful to each other as we can when having these discussions.
And this goes for people on both sides of the debate, me included.
So maybe we should all try to have that extra bit of sensitivity, patience and respect towards each other.

One other point that I'd like to make to you Barb, is that you've said on a couple of occasions that you don't understand exactly why people are so upset and frustrated, and that we just don't like people disagreeing with us.
For me, that's not the case at all. I'd be perfectly happy to have respectful discussions about XMRV with people of all opinions.
I'm not objecting to having respectful discussions at all, but it was the persistent and motivated postings from a minority of members who did not have a genuine interest in ME that upset me so much. They all seem to have left the forum now, but they simply made discussing the subject impossible for me.
Being on the 'other side of the debate', if I can put it like that, you would not have been at the receiving end of those particular individuals' postings, so you would not have been sensitive to them.
So please just believe me, when I say, that I think my comments were justified. I was not aiming my comments at genuine members of this forum, who have a genuine interest in ME. And, like I said, the people who were upsetting me so much seem to have left the forum now.

 

[currer]

Merck vaccine scientist Dr. Maurice Hilleman admitted presence of SV40, AIDS and cancer viruses in vaccines
Learn more: (link removed as requested)
sorry bullybeef, this was your find, no?
(To continue my point of being a bit p....d off with virologists.)

EDIT this natural news video now looks to be unreliable and could be a propaganda video.
Use your discretion as to whether to trust it.

 

[bullybeef]

I'm afraid I can't take credit for this find, currer, that was a forum member elsewhere. It's worth starting a new thread for this subject, me thinks.

 

[heapsreal]

Merck vaccine scientist Dr. Maurice Hilleman admitted presence of SV40, AIDS and cancer viruses in vaccines
Learn more: OP requested link be removed

sorry bullybeef, this was your find, no?
(To continue my point of being a bit p....d off with virologists.)

This maybe why dr john martin has been hushed out of research as he was always mention cmv monkey viruses etc.

SV40, Stealth Viruses and Polio Vaccines
Dr. W. John Martin
Center For Complex Infectious Disease


The somewhat eccentric elderly man contacted me to help with a legal victory he had engineered on behalf of a dying child. The child was said to have HIV but, with clear evidence of brain involvement, he possibly also had a stealth virus infection. A court order had been issued to test the specific polio vaccine lot the child had received for the presence of contaminating HIV. The order was very precise: at the behest of both the vaccine manufacturer and the federal government, there would be no testing for simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), and no other testing allowed of the vaccine lot. The child supporter suggested that if I could show stealth virus in the patients blood, the childs mother could reapply to the court for permission to test the vaccine for a stealth virus.

I gladly accepted the challenge, especially since my own request to FDA for access to undiluted polio vaccine lots for stealth virus testing had been refused. Knowing of my interest in the child's case, an ambitious trial lawyer took it upon himself to petition though the courts for release of other polio virus vaccine lots that had been received by various individuals he had represented in vaccine damage cases. He was asking the court to allow stealth virus testing in my University of Southern California (USC) laboratory. I saw his Brief on November 11, 1995 and suspected that it would lead to problems.

http://www.emergingworlds.com/ch_vaccines.cfm

cheers!!!

 

[currer]

Hi Heaps, I have edited my original post as the natural news video has been questioned as to its reliability. It could just be a propaganda video.

 

[Advocate]

There are moral questions in this debate too.

Given that PWME are abused and disparaged by the majority medical opinion, I am horrified to see "patients" (I suppose,) equally eager to abuse and vilify Dr. Mikovits, who has put her career on the line in an attempt to help us...

And I do not write this because of "adulation" of Dr Mikovits. I write it out of common decency.

Hi Currer,

I just dropped in to see what people were saying about the WPI legal troubles, and was amazed to see such a lovely post about Dr Mikovits. Thank you.

Advocate

 

[currer]

Thanks, advocate, its nice to be appreciated!

Good luck to Drs Mikovits and Ruscetti!