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Media Coverage of Dr. Alters NIH paper, post stories here

Rrrr

Senior Member
Messages
1,591
Amazing work!! Nice job!

feeling a little swamped here...in a good way tho. Just can't see if this has been posted already. Our team at xmrv global action transcribed the august 23rd fda media telebriefing, and has posted it here:
http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=216740433250#!/note.php?note_id=432527206796

the first paragraph:
here is our "close" transcription of today's formal tele-press briefing and q&a by the lo/alter scientists and their teams, as well as nih and cdc scientists regarding the fda paper and its implications. There are some excellent explanations of the results by drs alter and lo, with encouraging comments on forthcoming xmrv/murine leukemia virus (mlv) research. In a nutshell: The finding of multiple mlv sequences in patients with me/cfs is entirely consistent with - and indeed typical of - retroviral infections in humans. Causality is yet to be determined, however research is already underway to do just that. And to use dr alter's words, this team found a "dramatic association" of mlv's with me/cfs, and their findings "basically confirm the findings of the whittemore-peterson group".

View attachment 3729

happy reading!

P.s. Feel free to post excerpts of the transcription, with the above hotlink, just not the entire transcription please.:retro smile:
 

Rrrr

Senior Member
Messages
1,591
again Sick of CFS is so right, we aren't optimists at all! we are realists & our expectations were lower than yours RRRR.
i'm so sorry you are in bed, you really deserve a lot of credit for all do you despite how ill you are. you fight for us so hard & it is appreciated, even if as you stated to me earlier we go about it in different ways. :)
we both want the same result. that is for sure!

Very kind of you, serenity... thank you.
 

serenity

Senior Member
Messages
571
Location
Austin
a short mention on the air, well that's something. but i gotta say, i'm starting to be concerned with the lack of interest too now.
humn, really a roller coaster of emotions isn't it?
 

Sasha

Fine, thank you
Messages
17,863
Location
UK
Medscape article on Alter paper published Aug 25th

This is a long thread now, sorry if this has been already posted but just found this article on Medscape.

On a quick skim it seems good and thorough, with some interesting stuff at the end on the differences between the Alter & CDC studies that I don't recall seeing mentioned anywhere:

"Switzer said he and his coauthors also temporarily held up publication of their paper but ended up changing nothing.

"We felt it was the very best science we could do," he said.

They were unable to test patients' blood samples from Dr. Alter's group, Switzer said, because those scientists did not have sufficient stored specimens left."​
 

Sasha

Fine, thank you
Messages
17,863
Location
UK
Comment on Alter study on Guardian article about STDs (!)

A resourceful person has managed to get an informative comment about the Alter paper and its implications for the UK blood supply and CFS, plus criticism of The Guardian for not covering it, on an article about STDs in England. Here's the link to the article; it's the fifth comment, by "tomstones" (who appears from his avatar to be Woody Allen, in fact).

Click his "recommend" button, my friends! Very creative, that man!
 

Sasha

Fine, thank you
Messages
17,863
Location
UK
glad we got another article on us, but i HATE the stock photos of mice in all these articles.

Check out the stock photo for this article on STDs in England, Rrrr (there's a good comment on Alter/XMRV at the end that someone sneaked on - but I was struck by how much more fun you can have with your stock photos on a different topic!).
 

Rrrr

Senior Member
Messages
1,591
Discover magazine article on NIH/FDA paper
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/8...s-on-new-study-links-the-syndrome-to-a-virus/


Chronic Fatigue Debate Goes on: New Study Links the Syndrome to a Virus
submit to reddit . .

chronic-fatigue-virusChronic fatigue syndrome’s headaches, muscle aches, tiredness, and concentration problems have no known cause, so a paper published online yesterday, in which researchers report finding a type of virus in 87 percent of 37 chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patients tested, seems a promising step. But in statements to the media the researchers stress caution in interpreting results. The group also noted that it had delayed publishing the paper, originally meant to appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in May, due to conflicting reports from other scientists.

The National Institutes of Health’s Dr. Harvey Alter, senior author of the paper, said in a conference call with reporters, “It’s an association, but that’s all it is.” He was careful to say the findings don’t prove that a virus causes CFS. [NPR]

Alter’s caution is understandable, especially given recent CFS research history:

October 2009: A virus, XMRV (xenotropic murine leukemia virus–related virus), is found in 68 of 101 CFS patients.
January 2010: XMRV is not found in a British study that tested CFS patients.
July 2010: XMRV is not found in a Center for Disease Control study testing CFS patients.

Though this new study did not find XMRV (a virus also associated with prostate cancer), it found other viruses in the MLV (murine leukemia virus-related viruses) family–viruses not found in July’s Center for Disease Control study. That conflicting study was the reason for the publication’s delay, despite clamoring from some chronic fatigue syndrome patients.

“My colleagues and I are conducting additional experiments to ensure that the data are accurate and complete,” wrote co-author Harvey Alter of the National Institutes of Health, in an email statement to The New York Times last month. “Our goal is not speed, but scientific accuracy,” he wrote. [Scientific American]

As Scientific American reports, some researchers believe that the previous studies’ contradictions may be explained by the variety of patients chosen for the different studies (some much sicker than others), and perhaps the existence of different causes in different geographical regions. But in a commentary (pdf) published along with Alter’s study, a group of researchers led by Valerie Courgnaud called a geographic explanation “baffling.”

Given the syndrome’s confusing past, some researchers now hope to take a different tack: Another way to see if viruses are to blame, they say, is to monitor how chronic fatigue syndrome patients respond to anti-retroviral drugs.

Andrew Mason, a University of Alberta professor, co-wrote the commentary in the journal calling for trials testing anti-retrovirals in CFS patients who are positive for one of the MLV-related viruses. “If the patients improve, after a certain point you stop debating whether it causes the disease and say, the treatment works and we’re going to use it,” said Dr. Mason. [Wall Street Journal]

Pharmaceutical companies such as Merck & Co. and Gilead Sciences Inc. say more research is needed before they start large clinical trials, The Wall Street Journal reports, but others are already trying antiviral treatments on a small scale. A New Mexico doctor and blogger, Jamie Deckoff-Jones, and her 20-year-old daughter started taking a combination of three anti-retrovirals after being diagnosed with XMRV.

Related content:
80beats: Scientist Smackdown: Is a Virus Really the Cause of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?
80beats: “Yuppie Flu” Isn’t Just in the Head: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Linked to Virus
80beats: Could Prostate Cancer Be Caused by a Sexually Transmitted Virus?
Discoblog: What’s in a Name? Real Diseases Suffer from Silly Name Syndrome

Image: Whittemore Peterson Institute

August 24th, 2010 12:06 PM Tags: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, family health, health policy, pharmaceuticals, viruses
by Joseph Calamia in Health & Medicine | 0 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >
 
Messages
20
A resourceful person has managed to get an informative comment about the Alter paper and its implications for the UK blood supply and CFS, plus criticism of The Guardian for not covering it, on an article about STDs in England. Here's the link to the article; it's the fifth comment, by "tomstones" (who appears from his avatar to be Woody Allen, in fact).

Click his "recommend" button, my friends! Very creative, that man!

It's Alec Guinness as George Smiley in "Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy". Very apt when it comes to dealing with the CDC and the Wessley school.
 

justinreilly

Senior Member
Messages
2,498
Location
NYC (& RI)
Komaroff should have stopped them from using the Holmes criteria for this study (since it was his samples they used- collected in 1994 when Holmes was in use). That's ridiculous.
 

Rrrr

Senior Member
Messages
1,591
does anyone have the actual links to the big newspaper's articles. when i copy them from the first post on this thread, they do not copy as links, making it hard to use them in a pitch to the media (for more coverage).
 

LJS

Luke
Messages
213
Location
East Coast, USA
does anyone have the actual links to the big newspaper's articles. when i copy them from the first post on this thread, they do not copy as links, making it hard to use them in a pitch to the media (for more coverage).

right click (on a Mac hold down control) on the link and click "copy link location" (firefox) or "copy shortcut" (IE) or just goto the link then copy the address out of the address bar
 

Lynn

Senior Member
Messages
366
On a lighter note. My husband brought home the Wall Street Journal from 8/24 as a keepsake for me. The CFS news was on the front cover. How amazing is that?

We really are on the cusp of change.

Lynn