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XMRV testing: The REDLABS, trading as VIP Dx, WPI connection

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Red Labs don't offer XMRV tests anymore. Do you know where in Europe we can do the test?
Thanks.

You are several years out of date with XMRV: the original studies were retracted, and this virus this is no longer considered associated with ME/CFS (or with any disease for that matter). There's no evidence this virus can even infect humans.
 

fingers2022

Senior Member
Messages
427
You are several years out of date with XMRV: the original studies were retracted, and this virus this is no longer considered associated with ME/CFS (or with any disease for that matter). There's no evidence this virus can even infect humans.
I don't think the 'science' supports such definitive statements, Hip.
Mikovits still maintains that the virus was sequenced from human samples, and also that the negative studies were either looking for the wrong virus (as synthesised by Silverman), or using ineffective methods.
Basically, it was a stitch up. Buried (or maybe not) just like the work of De Freitas.

As a community of sufferers we have to be circumspect. Just because high authorities like NIH, CDC, NICE decree certain things doesn't mean that their decrees are based on sound science. They are more likely to be based on their view of how the proletariat should be manipulated.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
I'm not talking conspiracy so much as vested interests.

Most conspiracy theories are badly thought out, and this one is no exception. With ME/CFS costing billions to the economy not to mention to insurance companies, it's in nobody's interest to hide any cause of ME/CFS; the very opposite: it's in everyone's interest to find the cause and then develop a treatment. I suspect that's why there were so many XMRV replication studies that appeared after Mikovits's original one — because some researchers may have genuinely believed XMRV might be the cause (before of course numerous completely independent labs in numerous countries all got negative results).

Have a think about it, and try to find any vested interest that would want to suppress the XMRV discovery, if it were the cause of ME/CFS. Who would gain financially?

Even the studies linking XMRV to prostate cancer were retracted after it was found how easily it is to contaminate samples. Prostate cancer is nothing to do with ME/CFS, yet these XMRV studies were also retracted.



They are more likely to be based on their view of how the proletariat should be manipulated.

If your worldview sees science as primarily a means to manipulate the proletariat, that would explain the conspiracy views. Why such an Orwellian perspective? Sometimes corporate interests can lean in, but by and large, I think science is reasonably immune to being turned into a propaganda machine. (The exception was of course with Wessely and the disability insurance companies in the 1990s, where there was a major corruption in ME/CFS science; but in that case, there was a clearcut vested insurance company interest behind it).
 
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fingers2022

Senior Member
Messages
427
Most conspiracy theories are badly thought out, and this one is no exception. With ME/CFS costing billions to the economy not to mention to insurance companies, it's in nobody's interest to hide any cause of ME/CFS; the very opposite: it's in everyone's interest to find the cause and then develop a treatment. I suspect that's why there were so many XMRV replication studies that appeared after Mikovits's original one — because some researchers may have genuinely believed XMRV might be the cause (before of course numerous completely independent labs in numerous countries all got negative results).

Have a think about it, and try to find any vested interest that would want to suppress the XMRV discovery, if it were the cause of ME/CFS. Who would gain financially?

Even the studies linking XMRV to prostate cancer were retracted after it was found how easily it is to contaminate samples. Prostate cancer is nothing to do with ME/CFS, yet these XMRV studies were also retracted.

If your worldview sees science as primarily a means to manipulate the proletariat, that would explain the conspiracy views. Why such an Orwellian perspective? Sometimes corporate interests can lean in, but by and large, I think science is reasonably immune to being turned into a propaganda machine. (The exception was of course with Wessely and the disability insurance companies in the 1990s, where there was a major corruption in ME/CFS science; but in that case, there was a clearcut vested insurance company interest behind it).
Were you around when XMRV hit the scene?
Did you watch as Wessely recruited a retrovirologist (McClure, what a lovely lady...haha, I wouldn't screw her for all the negative studies in the world) to put the mockers on it ASAP?
Did you wonder why they were in such a hurry?
You said it yourself about Scumbag's (my pet name for that shithead) motives.

Why was Mikovits hounded and charged with something which was then dismissed?

Lipkin? What are his motives? I heard he was defending a case for sexual harrasment of a PhD student.
Would you trust the guy?
Maybe he's just fired up by research funding?

'Science immune to being turned into a propaganda machine'?
Oh man, are you kidding me? Big Pharma, Wessely (as you said), Crawley, White. Have you seriously pulled apart peer reviewed journal articles and not found gaping holes? Scientists are human just like you and me.

Oh, and...Wessely in 1990? He still rules the roost in the UK in 20 fucking 17...and that has influenced the world. Only recently has CDC removed GET and CBT from guidelines...and NICE still has this stated in the UK...to be reviewed...oh, yeah, we will see.

Time to get fucking real people. IF WE DON'T GET THIS SHIT, HOW CAN WE EXPECT JOE PUBLIC TO GET IT?
 
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Kati

Patient in training
Messages
5,497
Red Labs don't offer XMRV tests anymore. Do you know where in Europe we can do the test?
Thanks.
@Aspie Lymie XMRV was a lab contaminant and the WPPO paper from Lombardi has been retracted. Should there be labs testing for XMRV, it would be fraudulent and irresponsible to take money from patients in order to test and give a result from that.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Did you watch as Wessely recruited a retrovirologist (McClure, what a lovely lady...haha, I wouldn't screw her for all the negative studies in the world) to put the mockers on it ASAP?

McClure is a good retrovirologist, and she did an excellent job in demonstrating that XMRV was not linked to ME/CFS. It helped bring the sorry XMRV fiasco to its end. Sadly, for her efforts, she was rewarded by ME/CFS patients emailing her very nasty comments (see this article) — a shameful episode on the part of ME/CFS patients. You should be apologizing on behalf of the ME/CFS community, not making further nasty and vulgar comments as you did above, which if anything are going to alienate good researchers from entering the ME/CFS field.
 
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fingers2022

Senior Member
Messages
427
McClure is a good retrovirologist, and she did an excellent job in demonstrating that XMRV was not linked to ME/CFS. It helped bring the sorry XMRV fiasco to its end. Sadly, for her efforts, she was rewarded by ME/CFS patients emailing her very nasty comments — a shameful episode on the part of ME/CFS patients. You should be apologizing on behalf of the ME/CFS community, not making further nasty and vulgar comments as you did above, which if anything are going to alienate good researchers from entering the ME/CFS field.
McClure is a colleague of Wessely...go figure...no apology coming from this quarter.
What are her motives? Ask yourself.
Just to clarify, my 'nasty and vulgar comments' are aimed at nasty and vulgar people. I would like to think that I am a reasonable judge of character. Such intuition, judgement, is all that we sufferers can live by. The science is complete bollocks, you know that.

My judgement of you is that you try to be as objective as possible - that's laudable.
I don't think any of us has enough information to hand to make any definitive statements.
And I do respect the dialogue here as it keeps chipping away at the truth.
Just go easy on the dogma...OK?
 
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fingers2022

Senior Member
Messages
427
You should be apologizing on behalf of the ME/CFS community, not making further nasty and vulgar comments as you did above, which if anything are going to alienate good researchers from entering the ME/CFS field.
The field of ME 'research' in the UK is awash with fucking psychologists, mate.
Millions of research £££ going down that drain.
I'm totally done with being polite to these fuckers.
I'm 60 next birthday FFS.
They have fucking had it.
Good researchers? Alienated by my nasty and vulgar comments? Go on then, find me one....just one, that's all.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
McClure is a colleague of Wessely.

When she wrote the XMRV paper, McClure had never even met Wessely. So definitely not a colleague. It's most unjust that she received all that threatening vitriol from angry ME/CFS patients; the ME/CFS community should have issued an apology to her.

This is why I hate conspiracy theories, because they create all this unsubstantiated speculation about people's motives, and then innocent people get targeted. Just ask the parents of the children who were killed in the Sandy Hook shooting: those parents received death threats. Why? Because some halfwitted arsehole created a conspiracy theory stating that everyone in the Sandy Hook shooting were actors, and the whole thing was a setup to try to bring in gun control.



The field of ME 'research' in the UK is awash with fucking psychologists, mate.

Yes, full psychologists doing really appallingly bad science, and they deserve the strongest of criticism. But if you are going to criticize the bullshit produced by these psychologists, at least make sure the scientific view that you support is not itself a load bull. And I think most ME/CFS patients and researchers will tell you that XMRV is a load of bull. I keep my mind open to the possibility another retrovirus might be involved, but it's not XMRV.
 
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fingers2022

Senior Member
Messages
427
When she wrote the XMRV paper, McClure had never even met Wessely.
I keep my mind open to the possibility another retrovirus might be involved, but it's not XMRV.

They didn't know each other? Of course not, and you believe that - watch McClure (Crawley too) in videos and see how disingenuous they are. I wouldn't trust them as far as I could spit them.

Ahem, which Xenotropic Murine RV are you referring to? Silverman?
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
They didn't know each other? Of course not, and you believe that - watch McClure (Crawley too) in videos and see how disingenuous they are. I wouldn't trust them as far as I could spit them.

When I see the videos of Prof Myra McClure, I see a levelheaded Scotswoman who seems dedicated and competent at her craft. Your perceptions seem a little paranoid to me. Not being funny, but do you think the antiretrovirals you are taking might be altering your perceptions? Some antiretrovirals like efavirenz are known to cause paranoia and psychosis, see: Study: popular antiretroviral drug has same effect on brain as LSD. Efavirenz and tenofovir are sold in a combination pill.



How about we did down to the dirty details of that? You have the details?

Don't tell me, there is a conspiracy theory going around in which nefarious authorities used advanced mind control techniques to take over Judy Mikovits's mind, and get her to submit a negative finding in her own replication of her XMRV study. (Now I am being funny).
 
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halcyon

Senior Member
Messages
2,482
How about we did down to the dirty details of that? You have the details?
Yes, you can read them in the large multicenter study that was published. She was unable to reliably detect blinded spiked positive samples and detected negative samples as false positive. When finally given the opportunity to prove she could culture the virus, her samples somehow mysteriously were contaminated with mycoplasma and she couldn't prove anything. Her techniques were flawed, something that was later proven by others using the same PCR primers and monoclonal antibodies.
 

fingers2022

Senior Member
Messages
427
When I see the videos of Prof Myra McClure, I see a levelheaded Scotswoman who seems dedicated and competent at her craft. Your perceptions seem a little paranoid to me. Not being funny, but do you think the antiretrovirals you are taking might be altering your perceptions? Some antiretrovirals like efavirenz are known to cause paranoia and psychosis, see: Study: popular antiretroviral drug has same effect on brain as LSD. Efavirenz and tenofovir are sold in a combination pill.





Don't tell me, there is a conspiracy theory going around in which nefarious authorities used advanced mind control techniques to take over Judy Mikovits's mind, and get her to submit a negative finding in her own replication of her XMRV study. (Now I am being funny).
Haha, I wish!