• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Article: Retrovirology: Five Papers on XMRV and Contamination

A note to my regular readers:

Just in case anyone has been misled into thinking I have been keeping my head down due to shock at the revelations in the latest issue of retrovirology I am posting now to disabuse them. My silence has been caused by urgent and unrelated personal demands on my limited time which have prevented me from even reading much detailed material. My quick impression is that a term familiar in another context applies: FUD. Harvey Alter had a more graceful way of expressing the situation last week.

It may perhaps be significant that these stunning discoveries were published during the one week of the year when the public is most likely to buy motorized tie racks, salad spinners and double watch winders, if not pet rocks. I would vote for this as a double watch winder, though there may be a pet rock at the bottom of the bag.
 
But again - wouldn't this apply for MANY diseases where mice and their DNA are used?

Only if the suspect virus in humans is present in mice, and I think that's rare, not common. Using mice/their dna in labs isn't a contamination issue if the mice don't have the virus/dna being investigated. Though as I said, it does apply to looking for human retroviruses in general since mice have these in spades.