I don’t know, when I read this transcript a few days ago, I had a different impression. I was heartened. My feeling, especially about Dr Dodd’s (Roger Dodd, the Red Cross guy) presentation, was that they are taking XMRV seriously. I thought that basically he was saying, the research isn’t there yet, but we need to pay attention to this.
I thought the way Dr Dodd described the decision-making process was interesting, especially that public perception is almost –but not quite—on a par with scientific data. Although I’m not convinced that that’s a good thing, it lets us know that keeping public attention on XMRV works. Look at what he said about babesiosis, that it is known to be transmissible by transfusion, can be serious and even fatal, has a seroprevalance of 1-2% in blood donors, but they’ve only received one query about it in 3 years.
Another interesting thing he said about babesiosis that has implications for XMRV is that there has been a donor criterion in place for many years, but the evidence is that it has had NO demonstrable value in ameliorating Babesia transmission by transfusion.
Dr Dodd said, “There's a lot of information that we really need, to be in a position to think seriously about this agent,” and went on to mention a “gold standard” test, prevalence, incidence, risk factors, transmissibility, disease causation. Those are the same things that we want to know. So I find it encouraging that they are asking these questions. I think they’re saying we need data; we need good research. And I think so, too.
It’s hard to be patient when you’re a patient.