Hi, I just posted this to Forbes:
With special regard to the Hue paper, and contamination issues in general, nothing that has been published has proven the problem is contamination. I have read the Hue paper too.
They and others have only proven, yet again, that contamination is a possibility. This was already well known to retrovirologists, especially MLV researchers. There is nothing new here of any interest. XMRV researchers routinely test for contamination, and they design the experimental protocols so that if contamination occurs it will be obvious. The cases of contamination that have been reported are because everyone is checking. If contamination was such a big problem, why do so many studies using PCR finding nothing at all? The real issues lie elsewhere, and are not being debated in the media very much.
In any case none of the other methods used in the research have this problem, and they are used much more widely than simple PCR. PCR is a dead horse in this area. It like debating that a horse and cart is bad because of wheel ruts in the dirt roads, while jet airliners are cruising overhead. PCR is mostly being continued, in my view, because it is useful toward developing standardized high throughput mass blood screening for use in blood banks. We need to protect the blood supply, and banning ME/CFS patients from donating blood is not addressing the real problem, the masses of infected but currently healthy people.
Alex Young, aka alex3619
B.Sc. (biochemistry), B.Inf.(hons)
ME/CFS research advocate