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William Switzer - CDC looking for XMRV and MLV in lab workers!

CBS

Senior Member
Messages
1,522
What a bunch of naive fools we've been. We've been working on the assumption that the threat of XMRV in the blood supply would get the government's attention and force then into action when in truth it has forced them into a defensive posture.

What is really going to get the scientists going is the threat that they themselves have been infected as they have been handling murine retroviruses for the last 35 years.

In fact, this is the first time that I have actually heard William Switzer use the phrase "we share your concern" in reference to XMRV and MLVs but he's talking about lab workers and what now seems to be the consensus that XMRV ad MLVs were human created and that they are highly contagious! But don't worry, these highly contagious man-made retroviruses aren't in the general population but we do get the occasional odd positive in a pedigreed negative (lab worker) that we've simply ignored until now.


Themed Discussion: XMRV: New Findings and Controversies
3/2/2011 1:00 PM


http://app2.capitalreach.com/esp120...&&dp=player.jsp&e=13744&mediaType=podiumVideo

I haven't seen much discussion on the Q & A portion of the XMRV section of the CROI conference.

I'll get right to the bit I want to discuss. At minute 50:45 a very interesting discussion starts about the future studies in XMRV.

Two comments stood out.

"Dusty Miller and Steve Goff have shown some pretty convincing evidence that this virus behaves differently than other MLVs."

"Is preXMRV-2 infectious?" "Currently the only experiments underway are trying to figure out if this virus, pre-XMRV-2 is infectious. When you look at the full length sequence it seems to have open reading frames and so there seems to be no reason for it not to be infectious. But we don;t have any results on that."

You can mostly ignore the large self absorbed guy.

"I know a number of people who have been working with these mouse viruses for years and it (XMRV) does seem to be behaving differently."

"At least in culture, this is a replicating virus that can cause an infection in primary human cells in addition to cell lines and can pass to other cells and it is different from a lot of known MLVs so from a basic science perspective there is some interest in this virus."

Mike Bush - Director, Blood Systems Research Institute - "I think that there is no doubt after this meeting that this virus arose from a recombination when an original prostate tumor was explanted and propagated and it's extraordinarily infectious. In vitro it is clearly demonstrating infectivity and in explants and a variety of human cell lines and it can transmit into non-human primates. I'm a little concerned, this was human created in the laboratory and its a highly infectious retrovirus. And subsequent to that event, could it transmit to humans? We've been doing studies in pedigreed negative controls, some of whom happen to be lab workers working with this virus who intermittently score positive in one lab or another and I've just ignored that but now I'm beginning to be a little concerned that might there be transient infections in humans. Has anyone embarked on studies to look at nucleic acid or serologic detectability in lab workers who have or are working with these cell lines?"

Again, ignore the large obnoxious self-absorbed guy (who reassures himself that the test he did on himself was not a false negative).

William Switzer - CDC - (@ 54:55 min. - look at how anxious he is to get his hands on the mike :worried:)
"I just wanted to add to that, we share your concern Mike and we (THE CDC) have started a study looking at some archived specimens that we've screen and found other simian retroviruses for example and we're going to look for XMRV and other MLVs."
 

SilverbladeTE

Senior Member
Messages
3,043
Location
Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
1) because they can't have a lab worker who's infected suddenly decide to blab and tell the truth about the whole deliberate cover up and genocide of ME patients (and gulf war syndrome verterans too!)
So they need to clamp down on this fast.

2) hey, THEY might be infected too, so NOW they are going to do somehting to save their own arses! was ok to let "untermensch" rot and die of ME/CFS, but now THEY may have it themselves? Oh, different story!
F***** hypocrits!

3) LOL, their Master's in Congress will not be happy if a lot of lab workers get to sue the government for this gross breach of safety!
 

Cort

Phoenix Rising Founder
What a bunch of naive fools we've been. We've been working on the assumption that the threat of XMRV in the blood supply would get the government's attention and force then into action when in truth it has forced them into a defensive posture.

What is really going to get the scientists going is the threat that they themselves have been infected as they have been handling murine retroviruses for the last 35 years.

In fact, this is the first time that I have actually heard William Switzer use the phrase "we share your concern" in reference to XMRV and MLVs but he's talking about lab workers and what now seems to be the consensus that XMRV ad MLVs were human created and that they are highly contagious! But don't worry, these highly contagious man-made retroviruses aren't in the general population but we do get the occasional odd positive in a pedigreed negative (lab worker) that we've simply ignored until now.

What a dark vision...Do you see no commitment to the science in the fed governments handling of XMRV? No interest in the retrovirology community in the new bug? No concern about a retrovirus in the blood supply?

The NIH is spending over a million dollars on the Lipkin study, the NCI pumped a million dollars into simply characterizing XMRV's proteins, god knows how much much money they've pumped into it over all, there's the Blood Working Group, several CDC studies, the Alter/Lo work - all of it federally funded ----and all you see is a bunch of scientist only NOW getting interested because of their concern about their own health?

The CDC did look for it in the 'human population' in their first study and then more importantly in the Coop Diagnostics study. If they couldn't find XMRV in the population it was supposed to be in - then, of course, they're going to disregard odd findings in their lab population - every test has its little glitches - no mystery there (unless you want to make it into one).

That is way too dark for me...and I don't think it fits the facts at all. You may not agree with the CDC/NCI/NIH findings or you may but they pumped alot of money into this virus before they was any concern about it effecting their lab members.

Ugly stuff! At least with XMRV they have spent resources and money..
 

CBS

Senior Member
Messages
1,522
What a dark vision...Do you see no commitment to the science in the fed governments handling of XMRV? No interest in the retrovirology community in the new bug? No concern about a retrovirus in the blood supply?

The NIH is spending over a million dollars on the Lipkin study, the NCI pumped a million dollars into simply characterizing XMRV's proteins, god knows how much much money they've pumped into it over all, there's the Blood Working Group, several CDC studies, the Alter/Lo work - all of it federally funded ----and all you see is a bunch of scientist only NOW getting interested because of their concern about their own health?

That is way too dark for me...and I don't think it fits the facts at all. You may not agree with the CDC/NCI/NIH findings or you may but they pumped alot of money into this virus before they was any concern about it effecting their lab members.

Ugly stuff! At least with XMRV they have spent resources and money..

Seriously Cort, have you ever heard W. Switzer or anyone else at the CDC utter the words "we share your concern" when talking about ME/CFS? They have been forced to spend the money on XMRV! And it has not been government money. It started with researchers taking funds from other projects and look at all of the good CFS research that can't get Federal funds (Alan Light!).

As for my faith in the rest of humanity. I trust that there are many who are sincere with good intentions but given WHAT WE KNOW of our governments history (the Tuskegee and Guatemalan syphilis experiments for starters - most of those responsible went to their graves keeping these secrets), it might be reassuring to have warm fuzzy thoughts that no one could be that callus but it simply does not conform to the facts.

Some people are more concerned about their own interests, no matter how petty, that that of those around them. I can appreciate your wanting to see the world as full of nice fuzzy bunnies and butterflies but those bunnies are often a nice sized appetizer for the wolves and you can bet that the wolf doesn't give the bunny a second thought.

Sorry for raining on the fuzzy bunny parade.

And yes, this is a serious and dark disease at times!
 

CBS

Senior Member
Messages
1,522
Six weeks ago XMRV was all contamination and where was the CDC? They had this data in hand and they suspected a threat to their own workers.
 

dannybex

Senior Member
Messages
3,561
Location
Seattle
Bush's comment that it seems 'extraordinarily' or 'highly' infectious doesn't make sense to me -- or at least seems quite exaggerated. Didn't Cheney say the opposite (a year ago) during his talk w/Mikovits?

Still, if they're worried about becoming infected, that's probably a good thing.
 

CBS

Senior Member
Messages
1,522
Bush's comment that it seems 'extraordinarily' or 'highly' infectious doesn't make sense to me -- or at least seems quite exaggerated. Didn't Cheney say the opposite (a year ago) during his talk w/Mikovits?

Still, if they're worried about becoming infected, that's probably a good thing.

Bush said that they (The Blood Systems Research Institute) have been getting occasional positives in "pedigreed negatives, some times lab workers" AND UNTIL NOW THEY'VE IGNORED THEM (assuming that they must have been false positives)! And now he's getting worried.
 

Jemal

Senior Member
Messages
1,031
Oh man, what a mess... but this is good news as well, looks like many organisations have not given up on XMRV yet? The CDC is doing further studies, for example. Why would they be doing that if it's all contamination? Or maybe it's infectious contamination... then both sides are kind of right (the organisations saying XMRV is contamination and the organisations that are saying that XMRV is a infectious retrovirus).
 

shannah

Senior Member
Messages
1,429
There's a Japanese proverb that I think fits very well here.

"A man can endure the worst pain ..... of others."

It's one thing to have an intellectual interest in something (as has been going on) - but a totally different one to have a vested interest in it.
 

dannybex

Senior Member
Messages
3,561
Location
Seattle
Bush said that they (The Blood Systems Research Institute) have been getting occasional positives in "pedigreed negatives, some times lab workers" AND UNTIL NOW THEY'VE IGNORED THEM (assuming that they must have been false positives)! And now he's getting worried.

Thanks CBS. I'm certainly no scientist! But perhaps they are false positives, I don't know. Time will sort this out...hopefully within the next six months or so.
 

dannybex

Senior Member
Messages
3,561
Location
Seattle
There's a Japanese proverb that I think fits very well here.

"A man can endure the worst pain ..... of others."

It's one thing to have an intellectual interest in something (as has been going on) - but a totally different one to have a vested interest in it.

EXCELLENT Shannah. :)
 

Grape Funk

Senior Member
Messages
113
Location
USA
I just want to get this straight for myself and probably thousands out there asking the same question. NOW, what they are calling preXMRV2 here (and maybe preXMRV1) were once lab contamination that eventually integrated into humans, originally not supposed to transfer from a lab. NOW, what 2 days ago they were calling lab contamination in cell lines of RV21 (preXMRV1 and 2), could now actually be an infectious microbe(s)? So it is not the exact XMRV that mikovits et al were looking at, but something similar.
 

CBS

Senior Member
Messages
1,522
As for the claim that this is too "dark a vision," it does not take malice, to cause great harm. It simply takes indifference or perhaps fear and inaction.

What I was suggesting in my first post is that the level of indifference seems to have just dropped.

As for the question of XMRV/MLVs, I agree with Jemal, this is far from over. As Kathy Jones (NIH) said, there is a lot about XMRV/MLVs that does not conform to what has been assumed to be known about murine retroviruses.
 

Grape Funk

Senior Member
Messages
113
Location
USA
"Dusty Miller and Steve Goff have shown some pretty convincing evidence that this virus behaves differently than other MLVs."

Dusty Miller just stated a couple of says ago, in a quarrel with Gerwyn on the Retrovirology comment page, that XMRV was basically contamination, due to the same integration site in the genome, not once but twice.
 

CBS

Senior Member
Messages
1,522
"Dusty Miller and Steve Goff have shown some pretty convincing evidence that this virus behaves differently than other MLVs."

Dusty Miller just stated a couple of says ago, in a quarrel with Gerwyn on the Retrovirology comment page, that XMRV was basically contamination, due to the same integration site in the genome, not once but twice.

I don't spent time on that forum but are you sure it was Dusty Miller (just asking)?

I suspect that Mike Bush may have a pretty good sense of what DM is up to. He did not sound unsure of his statement in the least. I'm inclined to believe a publicly recorded statement over a blog post. I would like to know upon what Mike Bush was basing his comments.
 

Dr. Yes

Shame on You
Messages
868
If I was a CDC lab tech, I would reeeally not feel encouraged if Switzer told me he found me negative! Unless he uses one of those two new CDC PCR assays from Phase IIa of the Blood Working Group, which found both XMRV and other MRV's in CFS patient samples.. but oh yeah they abandoned those assays after they got positive results, and went back to using ones that couldn't find a single positive in pedigreed positive clinical samples from the WPI...

What a dark vision...

Maybe he's wearing sunglasses! :cool:

Funny, that seems to be the trend of late...