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A suprising documentary about the origin of AIDS which may relate to CFS issues

Annikki

Senior Member
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146
The following is a documentary telling a different story of how AIDS/HIV jumped from chimpanzees to humans. It likely relates issues about ME/CFS. This documentary offers another angle on the dark side of medicine in which lies, corruption and mistakes are made by medical authorities and governments.

Judy Mikovits said the first ME/CFS outbreak, the "1934 Los Angeles atypical polio outbreak" probably had something to do with the hospital staff at Los Angeles County General Hospital, (who became ill with CFS), being given an early prototype of the polio vaccine. In 1934, the Los Angles area was in the midst of a major polio epidemic. That hospital was the main facility where polio cases in the area were treated.

Dr. Judy Mikovits said it was likely hospital staff there was inoculated with an experimental polio vaccine at this time. This vaccine would have been cultured in mouse tissue. XMRV, which was found in 2007 by Dr. Robert Silverman, appears to be closely related to mouse retrovirus. Read the book "Plague," by Kent Heckenlively for more on this. This documentary's focus is on a polio vaccine given to people in the Congo in the late 1950s.

 
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Annikki

Senior Member
Messages
146
Here is a more recent interview with Edward Hooper, author of "The River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS." In this interview, Hooper states that there was a mistake and the vial of vaccine reviewed by The Royal Society of Medicine, was not the from the same lot as what was produced at Camp Lindi. He says that what vaccine was made from chimp kidney in Africa, was used in Africa and not shipped overseas, i.e. , to the Wistar Institute in America. He also says, that different polio vaccines were given to whites stationed there, and that the experimental, chimp-derived vaccine was only given to indigenous Africans in the area.
 
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dannybex

Senior Member
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Seattle
Dr. Judy Mikovits said it was likely hospital staff there was inoculated with an experimental polio vaccine at this time. This vaccine would have been cultured in mouse tissue. XMRV, which was found in 2007 by Dr. Robert Silverman, appears to be closely related to mouse retrovirus. Read the book "Plague," by Kent Heckenlively for more on this. This documentary's focus is on a polio vaccine given to people in the Congo in the late 1950s.

Mikovits has ZERO credibility with regards to ME/CFS -- or any of the other diseases (like fibro, autism, Parkinson's etc) where she speculates but has produced NO research or studies to back up her hypothesis -- and her book with Heckenlively is a testament to this fact.

And by the way, XMRV was found to be a contaminant.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/scientist-vaccine-jailed/
 
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Annikki

Senior Member
Messages
146
Actually, XMRV was discovered in 2007 by Dr. Robert Silverman in prostate cancer patients; his work hasn't been disputed, so XMRV is real. Only when it came to attributing it as the cause of CFS, did any controversy enter into the equation. Probably because Silverman's work didn't trace back to some dirty secret. Isn't it funny. If anyone wants to douse out any threatening idea, they call it crazy. Which is exactly what they have done to all CFS patients. Should it be any surprise to me that a researcher who gains ground in solving what causes CFS isn't subject to the exact same maligning?

I will be back later, explaining more about the poorly done studies which "disproved" the entire XMRV in CFS idea. I need to thumb through that book to find it, since it lacks an index. So please be patient! When they "disproved" XMRV in CFS, they did one study, where they didn't even use real CFS patients and simply took a roster of people who complained of "fatigue." Dr. Judy Mikovits said, that study intentionally avoided subjects from the Montoya sample, which consisted of bona fide CFS patients. That's called "stacking the deck-" not winning.

CFS appears in outbreaks, meaning it's contagious, meaning it's viral. Solving the mystery of CFS is about finding a virus. Dr. Mikovits found that XMRV could aerosolize, so it meets the criteria of what can explain past CFS outbreaks.

Bacteria don't spread so ubiquitously and need more direct means of transmission, since bacteria always require a food source- i.e., host. Viruses consist of RNA, not DNA, so they are quite different. Viruses go dormant when not in a host. During this time, they are dead by standard biological definitions. They only wake up when in a host cell. A virus can remain dormant for years. They have actually found virus particles as far up as the stratosphere. These RNA based, simple creatures have far more flexibility and adaptability than other pathogens. Bacteria are like us, since they are our ancestors, essentially. They need food, they need water. Thus, they are limited.
 
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dannybex

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Seattle
Suffice to say, I, nor anyone else disagreeing with you or Mikovits doesn't equate to us 'attacking' her or your name. We're just disagreeing and pointing out facts that have been verified multiple times over the last 10 years.

The same can't be said for Dr. Mikovits' claims. Her book is based on the notion that she was stopped by the government and big pharma because she discovered 'the truth'. Think about it -- if ME/CFS was caused by a retrovirus, don't you think the drug companies who have been making huge profits from their antiretroviral drugs would have rushed to her to fund more studies so they could open up huge new markets and multiply their profits? If not, why not? Why would they ever turn down such an opportunity?

It just doesn't wash.
 
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Annikki

Senior Member
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146
You are missing the point: you can attack any name you want, but if you need to attack someone's name to push your argument, something's wrong. I think what is in the documentary matters. The idea of a virus making the jump from animals to human, via the animal tissue cultures used in vaccines, is solid fact. Like the documentary said, the monkey virus SV-40, jumped species and infected people who received the Salk vaccine. The CDC admits this happened. This is well documented. It therefore isn't preposterous at all to figure it could have happened more than once.


Big Pharma researcher admits to faking dozens of research studies for Pfizer, Merck
https://www.naturalnews.com/028194_Scott_Reuben_research_fraud.html"
It's being called the largest research fraud in medical history. Dr. Scott Reuben, a former member of Pfizer's speakers' bureau, has agreed to plead guilty to faking dozens of research studies that were published in medical journals.

Now being reported across the mainstream media is the fact that Dr. Reuben accepted a $75,000 grant from Pfizer to study Celebrex in 2005. His research, which was published in a medical journal, has since been quoted by hundreds of other doctors and researchers as "proof" that Celebrex helped reduce pain during post-surgical recovery. There's only one problem with all this: No patients were ever enrolled in the study!

Dr. Scott Reuben, it turns out, faked the entire study and got it published anyway.

It wasn't the first study faked by Dr. Reuben: He also faked study data on Bextra and Vioxx drugs, reports the Wall Street Journal.

As a result of Dr. Reuben's faked studies, the peer-reviewed medical journal Anesthesia & Analgesia was forced to retract 10 "scientific" papers authored by Reuben. The Day of London reports that 21 articles written by Dr. Reuben that appear in medical journals have apparently been fabricated, too, and must be retracted.

After being caught fabricating research for Big Pharma, Dr. Reuben has reportedly signed a plea agreement that will require him to return $420,000 that he received from drug companies. He also faces up to a 10-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.

And governments? Oh, they might just have a problem with this coming out, because the UK and the US have not only endorsed the vaccine program, but have actually forced people to get vaccines in some cases, like military servicemen.

I do recall how Gulf War Syndrome is a disease nearly identical to CFS. Even Simon Wessely admits a link between the vaccinations given to soldiers deployed in the Gulf War and vaccines:

Role of vaccinations as risk factors for ill health in veterans of the Gulf war: cross sectional study
Matthew Hotopf, senior lecturer, Anthony David, codirector, Lisa Hull, research worker, Khalida Ismail, lecturer, Catherine Unwin, study coordinator, and Simon Wessely, codirector
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC27378/

"Among veterans of the Gulf war there is a specific relation between multiple vaccinations given during deployment and later ill health. Multiple vaccinations in themselves do not seem to be harmful but combined with the “stress” of deployment they may be associated with adverse health outcomes. These results imply that every effort should be made to maintain routine vaccines during peacetime.

Why does simple Simon contradict himself here? Why does he say, PTSD, which he is referencing by saying "stress of deployment," caused GWS when the data found GWS was tied to multiple vaccinations given during deployment. The Whittemore Peterson Institute found XMRV in GWS patients too. Why this weirdness from Wessely about vaccines? Until more recent times Wessely denied GWS was real, with the same enthusiasm he denied CFS was real. I learned long ago that if you could find a connection between all the various diseases and symptoms he attacks, you could learn a whole lot about his true agenda. He's decidedly pro-industry and pro-government. In the case of vaccines, I see a case where the interests of industry and government fully overlap. Wessely is a big industry apologist, and even denied cell phone radiation was harmful. Big Pharma may be another industry to which he's a paid apologist -or paid denier for.

Your argument, that billions await any company who wants to develop drugs for XMRV, has serious holes in it. Who exactly is going to make money treating XMRV? It's hard to make a fortune selling drugs for a disease that no one admits to. Look at the piddling amount of research money invested into CFS research.

Making drugs doesn't equate to easy free money. The money a drug company has to invest to create any medication is huge. Research and clinical trials cost millions. And since XMRV isn't taken seriously, just like CFS, no one would do the research in the first place.

AIDS has shown it is nearly impossible to get rid of retroviruses. The amount of money that has to be invested in fixing any retrovirus problem is, therefore likely to be huge. Even if pharmaceutical companies did do the research and then developed drugs to treat it, no company would yield a profit on the drug until the amount invested in research was paid off, which would take a long time. Well maybe big Pharma could afford it.
 
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dannybex

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Your argument, that billions await any company who wants to develop drugs for XMRV, has serious holes in it. Who exactly is going to make money treating XMRV? It's hard to make a fortune selling drugs for a disease that no one admits to. Look at the piddling amount of research money invested into CFS research.

That's why, if there was ANY evidence to back up Mikovits' hypotheses, the drug companies would have taken a tiny percentage of their profits and willingly invested them in further research to verify if her claims were valid.

Making drugs doesn't equate to easy free money. The money a drug company has to invest to create any medication is huge. Research and clinical trials cost millions. And, since XMRV isn't taken seriously, just like CFS, no one would do the research in the first place.

The drugs already exist, and have for 2 decades. Secondly, 'millions' is nothing for these pharmaceutical companies.

And XMRV isn't taken seriously, because it's never been proven in studies to cause ME/CFS or any of the other diseases Dr. Mikovits says it causes. Nor has she proven it's aerosolized. If you can find a study or research where she's proven that, then please post the link.

AIDS has shown it is nearly impossible to get rid of retroviruses. The amount of money that has to be invested in fixing any retrovirus problem is, therefore likely to be huge. Even if pharmaceutical companies did do the research and then developed drugs to treat it, no company would yield a profit on the drug until the amount invested in research was paid off, which would take a long time. Well maybe big Pharma could afford it

The drugs have worked well enough so that millions of men and women around the world have their lives back and have gone back to work. If, as you erroneously claim, that ME/CFS is caused by a retrovirus or even a virus, then the same could have and would have happened with ME/CFS patients.
 
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dannybex

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You stated the following in your original post:

"CFS appears in outbreaks, meaning it's contagious, meaning it's viral. Solving the mystery of CFS is about finding a virus."

The vast majority of ME/CFS cases are not found in outbreaks. If it were contagious, then the percentage of people with the disease would've grown exponentially over the past 80-100 years. It has not.

And again, no one is 'attacking' Mikovits' name. We're questioning her claims and the lack of studies or research she's presented to back up her claims. IMO, the only one hurting her reputation is herself.
 

Annikki

Senior Member
Messages
146
That's why, if there was ANY evidence to back up Mikovits' hypotheses, the drug companies would have taken a tiny percentage of their profits and willingly invested them in further research to verify if her claims were valid.
The validity of her or any claim isn't predicated on what a drug company does or doesn't do. There are few if any drugs manufactured to treat CFS; that doesn't mean CFS doesn't exist.

And XMRV isn't taken seriously, because it's never been proven in studies to cause ME/CFS or any of the other diseases Dr. Mikovits says it causes.
It was proven by multiple studies done by Dr. Mikovits and others. Then one study appeared claiming it was a lab contaminant. Her book Plague explains how the study which alleged it was a lab contaminant was flawed.[/quote]

Nor has she proven it's aerosolized. If you can find a study or research where she's proven that, then please post the link.
I don't have copyright permissions or time to type content from the book, Plague. This interview of Dr. Judy Mikovits by Dr. Mercola mentions this:

Sigh. The drugs have worked well enough so that millions of men and women around the world have their lives back and have gone back to work. If, as you erroneously claim, that ME/CFS is caused by a retrovirus or even a virus, then the same could have and would have happened with ME/CFS patients.
Why would a CFS patient be given AIDS drugs?! HIV is different than XMRV. One is a lenti retrovirus the other is a gamma retrovirus. That doesn't even make sense.

BTW, there is no cure for AIDS and I can say from having met someone with HIV, while he can go to work, most of his money goes to paying the costs of the pharmaceutical drugs- so AIDS patients aren't out there having a good time and fun in the sun. Merck employees even made death threats to researchers uncovering the vast many problems with Vioxx. Vioxx killed around 55,000 people, probably more. The company knew it was killing people and still marketed the drug. This makes it clear what the real motive is- not healing the sick, but profit.
 
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Annikki

Senior Member
Messages
146
Here's one study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3073172/
There's also the studies done by the WPI in 2009. I know where this is likely headed- back around in circles where you will use "appeal to authority" and will cite Lipkin study as "proof XMRV doesn't exist and I will say XMRV does exist- in prostate cancer. Yet, I find it a bit more than odd that the alleged lab contaminant found in CFS XMRV Lipkin Study that resembles a mouse retrovirus just happened to be so close to an existing murine (mouse) retrovirus found in prostate cancer patients.

In the book Plague, Dr. Mikovits said her lab was clean. She'd worked in the field long enough to learn how to keep a lab clean. She said that's what most researchers do, it is standard practice- and that anyone who worked in the field long enough learns the importance of keeping a lab clean In her book she specified the exact procedures she used in preparing the lab for the XMRV detection.

Dr. Judy Mikovits was a student, and later colleague and friend of Dr. Frank Ruscetti, the man who really began the field of retrovirology, whose work pioneered the study of HIV. She wasn't just some hack fresh out of college. She'd worked in the field of cancer research for years and she said she and most all other serious researchers know the protocol for doing any lab work.

These days, a study is only as good as the researchers. Conflict of interest, and siding on the side of industry is an ongoing problem among scientists these days. You repeatedly attack Dr. Mikovits as having low ethics. Yet, when it's apparent the author of the study which "debunked" XMRV had questionable ethics, who should we believe?
Lawsuit at Columbia University roils prominent chronic fatigue syndrome research lab
"Ian Lipkin of Columbia University, a well-known virologist who probes links between microbial infections and neuropsychiatric disorders, is being sued, along with the university, by epidemiologist Mady Hornig, his long-term collaborator. In the lawsuit, filed on 15 May in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Hornig alleges that Lipkin for years has discriminated against her on the basis of sex and created a hostile work environment, violating U.S. and New York civil rights laws. In particular, it alleges that Lipkin took credit for Hornig’s work; diverted or misused funds, thus delaying the publication of Hornig’s research results; undermined her relationships with external collaborators and potential donors; and improperly added himself as principal investigator to grants.

In an email response to a request for comment, Lipkin denies the charges, writing, “I did not engage in any wrongdoing and will vigorously defend against the allegations." A Columbia spokesperson said the university does not comment on matters in litigation." https://www.sciencemag.org/news/201...ominent-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-research-lab

Here in Lipkin you see someone similar to Simon Wessely, since Wessely's "debunking" of CFS uses also classically sexist ideas such as "neurasthenia," "hysteria" or "mass hysteria" to promote pseudoscience. It seems the recipe for promoting lies is claiming the opposing argument was made by some stupid, flighty woman.

In law enforcement it isn't the statement each side makes which typically indicates who the liar is; instead, the perpetrator is typically the party which stands to gain from a crime. Dr. Mikovits gained nothing, infact she lost everything. Lipkin swiftly received a grant for 1 million after he published his XMRV "debunking" paper.

my list also includes studies which predate XMRV. Now this is where I introduce the reader to a since forgotten ME/CFS researcher, Dr. Elaine DeFreitas and her work. Dr. Elaine DeFreitas, back in the early 1990's also found evidence of retrovirus in XMRV.

Furthermore, Dr. Mikovits wasn't the only researcher to find evidence of a retrovirus in CFS and she wasn't the only person who found evidence of a retrovirus in CFS only to have her name slandered and her career ruined evidence of a retrovirus in CFS.

Here's an by Phoenix Rising about Dr. Elaine DeFreitas:
"The First Retrovirus in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)"

Posted by Cort Johnson

Quote:
“And suddenly I could see myself 20 years from now, when I'm a high school biology teacher and someone calls and says, ‘Hey, they just found a retrovirus in CFS’. And maybe that's how it will happen. And I know how I'll feel - it'll feel great” Elaine DeFrietas


Chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) patients, of course, weren’t the only ones to feel the sting of this mysterious illness - their advocates have as well. Certainly there’s no more disheartening story on the researcher end than Elaine DeFreitas whose career rose and fell on the horns of the dilemma that has been chronic fatigue syndrome.

An accomplished researcher with 20 plus publications under her belt after her CFS paper she would publish a few more and her career would be over - an entirely unforeseen end for a woman Hilary Koprowski hired on the spot, later saying “I saw in her an extremely clever, inventive and driving person. She sinks her teeth into a problem. And she’s enormously careful.”


By the time it was all said and done Dr. DeFreitas career and health were shattered, researchers shied away from CFS like it was the plague, and the CFIDS Association would learn a hard lesson about the politics of CFS. It’s hard to find much good now that came out of that exciting and disturbing two year span when patients hoped the answer was close at hand.

Given that many patients believed Dr. DeFrietas” finding had never ever really been disproven, it wasn’t surprising to hear the rumors that Dr. DeFreitas’ virus had been rediscovered pop up quickly after the XMRV announcement. It took about a month for the WPI to put those rumors to rest but it turns out that a simple rereading of Osler’s Web would have sufficed; Dr. Peterson had pulled XMRV out of blood that had been frozen for over 20 years - Dr. DeFreitas asserted that her virus hardly appeared to tolerate freezing at all.



A rereading of Osler’s Web suggested that what happened to Dr. DeFreitas and her retrovirus was more complex than the scuttlebutt suggested. Yes, CFS was the butt of jokes at the CDC, and yes, the CDC could have and should have done more and other things, but two figures within agency, Dr. Thomas Gunn - the head of the CDC program on CFS and Dr. Folks - a top virologist at the agency, both desperately wanted to find the virus and they tried for over a year to find it. Dr. Gunn ultimately charged that the CDC wasn’t interested in finding the virus, but Dr. Folks, the retrovirologist in charge of the investigation, ended up believing Dr. DeFreitas’ virus was nothing more than a contaminant, one of the many endogenous retroviruses that we all carry.



Reading Osler’s Web for me punctuated what a risky and complicated situation Elaine Defreitas, the CDC, the CAA and CFS Community was in. Hillary Johnson came to deplore the CDC with a passion and the CFIDS Association with an almost equal passion. We don’t hear the CDC brass’s side - they probably wouldn’t have talked anyway - and we certainly don’t get the CAA’s side, but we seem to hear everything the central characters in the book have to say - which makes it a fascinating read.

The Announcement - Kyoto, Japan (1990)
Dr. Elaine DeFrietas hadn’t just stumbled on this retrovirus. Several years prior she’d been contacted by - who else - Paul Cheney, and CFS had slowly come to take more and more of her time. She’d been wor king on her assays for over two years, testing and retesting them until she’d got them right. A careful researcher at the renowned Wistar Institute under a renowned virologist, Hilary Koprowski, Dr. DeFreitas had used multiple techniques to check her findings and had taken elaborate precautions to guard against contamination.


She knew that the internationally renowned Gallo team had fruitlessly scoured CFS patients’ blood for retroviruses but her findings seemed irreproachable; 4/5 of Dr. Cheney’s adult patients and 3/4 of Dr. Bell's pediatric patients were positive, as were 43% of healthy adults in close contact with the patients and even a third of healthy playmates for children with this disease. None of the healthy non-exposed controls were, meaning chronic fatigue syndrome patients appeared to be carrying a readily infectious retrovirus. (At one point Dr. Bell posited that 15% of the children in his home town, Lyndonville, would eventually get sick.)



With her mentor prodding her, Dr. DeFreitas and Dr. Cheney delivered the news of a possible retrovirus in chronic fatigue syndrome to a few lethargic, uninterested Hilary Koprowski and the CFS retrovirusresearchers at a Neuroscience Conference in Kyoto, Japan in Sept. 1990. The researchers showed little interest but with Hilary Koprowski standing by her side, the media took note. By 3 AM that morning the international phone lines were humming. A day later Dr. DeFrietas and Dr. Cheney disembarked to a media frenzy in San Francisco. Both their world and ours changed overnight.



The tone emanating from the CDC was, to put it generously, ‘skeptical’; in-house, chronic fatigue syndrome tended to be treated with derision but Tom Folks, the head of the CDC’s retrovirology division, harbored few doubts that she was correct; Elaine DeFreitas worked for Hilary
869-Koprowske.jpg

Koprowski - one of his idols - and if Hilary Koprowski was standing behind her Folks thought her data was undoubtedly rock solid. Plus he was intrigued by Dr. Koprowski’s idea of smoldering central nervous system viruses sparking an array of unusual conditions including CFS. Assuring Dr. Cheney that Jon Kaplan, a notoriously harsh critic CFS at the CDC, would not be involved, he quickly agreed to attempt to replicate her findings. With Dr. Gunn, an outspoken advocate for CFS, heading up the program, Dr. DeFreitas appeared to be in good hands.




A Halting Start



Things quickly went south with the CDC collaboration, though, when Dr. Folks was unable to replicate Dr. DeFreitas’ results. Part of the problem revolved around Dr. DeFreitas early announcement. Because she had announced far in advance of her publication date, she wasn’t at liberty yet to provide researchers with her keys to the puzzle - her gene sequences and her assays. With the public announcement still ringing in his ears, however, Dr. Folks felt compelled to mount an effort. (It’s difficult to tell how in the dark the team was. In Osler’s Web they are given Dr. DeFreitas’ complete guidelines later. (Dr Heineine, however, later states they were given the complete protocols early in the process).

A Finicky Virus - It didn't help that the virus turned out to be rather finicky. For example, Dr. DeFreitas used a machine called a DNA extractor which the CDC - a center of viral studies in the US - didn't own and wasn’t about to purchase. Dr. DeFreitas also stated that the virus needed seven days in the autoradiograph for the viral bands to appear. The CDC, on the other hand, apparently had never needed more than 4 days in the autoradiograph for a viral band to appear. According to Osler’s Web the CDC never acquired a DNA extractor nor did they ever use the autoradiograph for more than four days.

A second round of tests produced negative results as well. With few positive results and the already tenuous funding for the project drying up - despite the ample congressional funding allocated for the study of the disease - Dr. Gunn went on the offensive penning an aggressive memo to Director Mahy questioning the efficacy of the retroviral work and the agency’s attitude toward the disease:

Quote:
“I think it is high time that CDC began to treat the study of the syndrome with the same degree of concern would be afforded to any other serious illness”


Quote:
“I am appalled at the vicious attacks I have heard made on Dr. Nancy Klimas, Dr. Elaine DeFreitas, Dr. Komaroff and others and accused the agency of studying the disease in a ‘frivolous’ manner.’


Dr. Gunn had been a visible and aggressive advocate for the disease but he was an epidemiologist not a virologist and Director Mahy took him to task for trying to insert himself into the project. He ordered him not to involve himself in the retroviral work, not to report the agency's progress to Dr. DeFreitas and not to provide statements to the media or to other researchers in the field - an order that was later rescinded. In fact, Dr. Folks continued to confide in Dr. Gunn and Dr. Gunn would continue to have a say in the retroviral effort, but the episode indicated the disharmony in the agency over the disease. The disagreements did have one positive effect, however. Dr. Folks got the beta scanner he wanted and the speed of his work increased tremendously.

An Invitation Declined - With two test failures behind him, Dr. Folks invited Dr. DeFreitas to observe his lab procedures firsthand - an invitation that she almost inexplicably, given the stakes involved, turned down. Instead she invited the CDC to come to her lab, which they in turn declined, citing a lack of travel money.

The CDC then offered to send their samples - on ice - for her to test. At this point both she and they came to understand they’d been working differently; Dr. DeFreitas never froze her samples because doing so broke up the DNA sequences thus disturbing her results. The CDC, on the other hand, quickly froze all their samples as a matter of course arguing that, yes, freezing did break up DNA, but that it only affected the efficacy of the testing when the viral loads were very, very low. They noted that Dr. DeFreitas had recorded finding very high viral loads in her samples . (Ultimately the CDC tested both frozen and unfrozen whole blood).

The CDC’s troubles persisted. Even with Dr. DeFreitas’ gene sequences finally in hand, and despite trying multiple combinations of temperatures, buffers, etc., they continued having trouble getting the specificity of their primers up to snuff. Meanwhile, Oncore, a small commercial diagnostic lab in Texas, developed a PCR test based on the Wistar paper and reported that 70% of their 500 samples from Dr. Cheney, Dr. Peterson and others had tested positive.



In a detailed letter to the CDC lab, Dr. DeFreitas enumerated a series of errors she felt the agency was probably making and invited the CDC to come to her lab. That, according to Hillary Johnson, was impossible; while the agency had been given $2 million for CFS research they had budgeted only a small amount of money for travel - and it was gone.

The Virus Captured - While the agency continued having difficulty replicating her results, Dr. DeFreitas appeared to have actually found the virus in human cells and it was a dooz

y. As the virus came into focus it became clearer and clearer that, despite its genetic similarity to HTLV-2, it was not that virus at all. In fact, exhibiting properties of both foamy and lenti-viruses, it didn't look like any known retrovirus. Interestingly, giving the fatigue problems in CFS, Dr. DeFreitas seemed to be finding viral fragments in the cell’s energy factories - the mitochondria.


Finally, Progress - Tom Folks was making progress in one area, however; after months of effort the CDC finally achieved identical ‘sensitivities’ to Dr. DeFreitas’ assay, and after checking on his samples Dr. DeFreitas agreed. With this breakthrough, Dr. Folks announced to the CFS Steering Committee at the CDC that he might be close to duplicating her work.

A Breakthrough - Then came some big news; Dr. Folks announced he’d found the virus in all six of Dr. Bell’s samples, 2/3 of the Atlanta patients and none of the local controls. Rerunning the test at a different stringency yielded similar results - it appeared a legitimate breakthrough had occurred. At the CDC, Dr. Gunn reported that the CFS jokes had stopped and the agency began, for the first time, to bring its resources to bear on the disease. They lined up the purest sample of patients they could find; people who met the definition but without any psychiatric overlays. If Dr. DeFreitas’ test could differentiate these patients and healthy controls, both she and the CFS community would be in business. This, Asst. Director Dowdle said “is what we’re good at.”

There was still one looming problem; Dr. DeFreitas’ primers appeared to work on her patients and some CDC patients, but they still failed to identify HTLV-2 in a standard cell line - something Dr. Folks felt they should have done given the genetic similarity between the two viruses. Finding HTLV-2 in a standard cell line would indicate that Dr. DeFreitas had found a legitimate virus instead of some gene sequences belonging to what is called an ‘endogenous retrovirus’.

The Unraveling - in the midst of all this, trouble reared its head. In a Sept 1991 meeting of the CFS Advisory Council, a wide-ranging group containing the central figures in the viral hunt, a Scottish molecular biologist and CFS researcher, John Gow , who had been collaborating with Dr. DeFreitas on a separate replication study, announced that despite spending “many months and many thousands of pounds” he had been unable to find any sign of an exogenous (acquired) retrovirus. Based on his results, he felt Dr. DeFreitas had found nothing more than an endogenous (benign) retrovirus. All the major players, with the notable exception of Dr. DeFreitas - locked in a custody battle over her son - were there.

Upon questioning, it became clear that Dr. Gow had used a different (brand) of enzyme in one part of the study. Later the Gow team insisted that it made no difference: an enzyme was an enzyme and the one that they'd used had worked for them for years. In the aftermath they blamed Dr. DeFreitas for not being forthcoming with all of her work, and reported that she had not responded to a request that they visit Wistar so they could do a hands-on overview of her techniques. They noted that as University scientists (and long-time CFS researchers) they had no axe to grind.

Dr. Folks felt Dr. DeFreitas’ inability or unwillingness to attend the meeting or send a representative in her place hurt her. He noted that the specific enzyme Dr. DeFreitas used had not been in her paper and he felt that any lab that followed the procedures based on her paper should be able to reproduce her results. In private, despite his earlier success, Dr. Folks reported that his team was finding much the same results as Dr. Gow's team.

Trouble in Wistar - Back at Wistar, Elaine DeFreitas’ foundation was crumbling. Her mentor Hilary Koprowski had been fired for administrative lapses and his successor was casting a wary eye at her inability to acquire NIH funding and the length of time it was taking the CDC to confirm her results.

Then, to her utter surprise, her long-awaited grant at the NIH failed to get funded. In hindsight the reasons appeared pretty clear. Dr. DeFreitas had received NIH grants before but none of them had come laden with the kind of baggage this one had. Not only was she dealing with a controversial disease, but the way the grant proposal had come about was problematic for such a conservative agency. The fact that Dr. DeFreitas announced her findings in Japan six months prior to publication was one black mark. The media conference in San Francisco was another and her collaborators were another.

It’s difficult to parse Dr. Cheney's contributions during this period, but in retrospect it’s clear that they were both positive and negative. An almost omnipresent figure in Osler’s Web and an ardent and articulate advocate, Dr. Cheney was a source of hope to the patients, but his tendency to speculate on research matters in public and to tie together loose ends with rather firm knots drove some researchers to distraction. The more Dr. DeFreitas got to know Dr. Cheney the more she trusted his instincts, but the more Dr. Cheney appeared in the press the less and less the research community trusted him. Some researchers thought he was simply nuts. Others detected a fertile and creative mind. Whatever his many contributions to the patient, it’s clear he was no asset to anyone attempting to make his or her way through the traditional research channels.


It didn't help either that Dr. DeFreitas’ funding ($20,000/month) was coming from a patient support organization - the CFIDS Association of America - that hardly appeared to the NIH to be an objective source of funding. With the DeFreitas team displaying exactly the wrong qualities, the hidebound NIH rejected her grant. At the same time, to her understandable dismay, a similar grant to study a retrovirus in chronic fatigue syndrome was approved for a researcher (also working with the CFIDS Association) who’d managed to stay under the radar.

The Unraveling - Meanwhile Dr. Folks’ team took a backward step; for two months they were unable to achieve the sensitivity they had in June. Without adequate sensitivity the assay would either pick up other viruses (or genetic sequences) or it would miss XMRV entirely. A team of CDC molecular biologists examined the problem and suggested the Folks team, temporarily at least, drop the attempt to differentiate between CFS and healthy controls - and go back to square one. It took them six months to recover their ground but once they got the sensitivity back to snuff and started testing patients again all their healthy controls began testing positive - they were still off.

With the CDC bollixed, Dr. Gunn asked Dr. DeFreitas to do her own study of the CDC’s samples. She would test both CFS and healthy patients; if she could differentiate between healthy controls and the CFS patients, he promised the CDC would come to her lab to try to figure out what had gone wrong. With the CDC still not owning a DNA extractor, however, Dr. DeFreitas would be required to extract the DNA in her lab - an expensive task. Under severe financial pressure from Wistar, Dr. DeFreitas at first balked stating she didn’t haveretrovirus replication the time or the money to do the DNA extraction but she ultimately agreed to do the tests.

A Lifeline Disappears - The situation for Dr. DeFreitas must have been agonizing; she’d felt she’d actually located and grown the virus - a real breakthrough - but she was short of money and the poor findings at the CDC threatened her status at Wistar. The CFIDS Association had been funding her for several years but couldn’t provide the kind of financial support she really needed.

She had her own ace up her sleeve, however. Six months earlier the Chiron biotechnology firm had entered into a confidential agreement with Wistar. In return for receiving the details of her work Chiron would develop a commercial test for CFS; a prospect that could be worth millions. But Chiron also had trouble duplicating Dr. DeFreitas work. After sending an aide to Chiron for a week, Chiron’s results start matching up with hers. (One wonders why she didn't do this with the CDC.) Chiron was Dr. DeFreitas’ bulwark - even if the CDC couldn’t duplicate the results; a successful commercial test kit by Chiron would be enough, she felt, to ensure the legitimacy of her test.

By this point D r. DeFreitas was growing live virus in her lab and offered to send Chiron some. But then came news that Chiron, in apparent breach of their confidentiality agreement, had invited four researchers (Jay Levy, Anthony Komaroff, Gary Holmes and Stephen Straus) to discuss the project. Detecting a change in tone, Dr. DeFreitas refused to send her precious samples to the lab and Chiron backed off the project. It turned out, despite their earlier positive results, and after reportedly spending a lot of money and 8 or 9 months time, the Chiron team had also run into technical problems. Dr. DeFreitas’ lifeline was gone.

More Problems at the CDC - three months later, Dr. Folks was still detecting signs of the retrovirus in both patients and controls, leading him to believe that Dr. DeFreitas had detected an endogenous retrovirus (i.e. already present in human DNA and benign) rather than an exogenous one (i.e. infective and active). Hillary Johnson reported that he was simply depressed. Unlike his other CDC counterparts he’d believed from the beginning that an infectious pathogen had wreaked its damage in CFS. Moreover, he believed, like Hilary Koprowski , that a retrovirus had probably infiltrated the central nervous system. He had no illusions about the seriousness of the disorder, calling it “a bigger disease than multiple sclerosis”.

The Final Blow - the final blow for Dr. DeFreitas at the CDC occurred when they broke the code on her analysis of the CDC's samples in March 1992. Not only had she found only three positives but they’d all come from healthy controls. She noted that at a late stage she’d found a problem with their primaries but later getting good primers she repeated the test again and again and again with the same results: the CFS patients remained negative.

The Patient Question - the result was inexplicable to her. Dr. DeFreitas had come forth with her results for her paper only after extensive experimentation. She’d winnowed her assays down to the point where her samples had consistently tested positive or negative. In her own internal blinded experiments she’d been able to pick out the CFS patients again and again. Why had she failed now?

Was because of the patients themselves? Had the CDC, in its attempt to pick out the ‘purest’ CFS patients, excluded, perhaps without realizing it, the very kinds of patients that would test positive? The CDC simply gathered patients on the strength of their ability to meet the definition. In order to get the ‘purest’ CFS patient possible they excluded people with psychiatric conditions and in doing so they were simply following standard research protocols.

The samples Dr. Cheney was sending to Dr. DeFreitas, however, were from his cognitively challenged, neurologically hampered patients - perhaps a very similar set to the ‘psychologically challenged’ patients the CDC was excluding from their studies. Dr. Cheney had found that the virus “did not tend to show up in what we now think of as typical CFS patients - people who came down with this disorder after a mono-like illness”. He noted that “the CDC's case definition is biased in favor of mono-like patients because of the diagnostic criteria’s emphasis on fever and lymphadenopathy. Those patients are negative.”

A Strange Virus - Even in Dr. DeFreitas’ lab the virus had played an unusual game of hide and seek; it tended to disappear in her samples when patients were most ill and then reappear when they were feeling better. Remarkably, the patient with the most evidence of retroviral infection in Dr. Bell's cohort was an 11-year-old who was healthy at the time of testing and later (gradually) came down with CFS. Dr. Bell had actually used him as his healthy control.

Dr. DeFreitas asked the CDC to send her samples of the excluded group - those depressed, psychiatrically challenged patients - she would test them on her dole but they refused; two years later with perhaps $500,000 spent and with Ebola and Hantavirus in the news, this was the end of the line for the CDC. The paper they would write would not mention their ability at one point to differentiate between Dr. Bell’s and Dr. Cheney’s patients but only their and Dr. DeFreitas inability to differentiate between their own samples. It was, not surprisingly, a bitter blow to Dr. DeFreitas.

With the CDC test and the Chiron collaboration on the rocks, Wistar advised Dr. DeFreitas to get out of CFS research. With Dr. Klimas floating the promise of a tenured position at the University of Miami, Dr. DeFreitas decided to move on.

The Last Study - Meanwhile Dr. Gunn left the CDC promising to battle any attempts to whitewash the agency’s earlier findings and joined the CFIDS Association to offer one last study. Dr. DeFreitas, Herst Labs and Dr. John Martin would assess the presence of a retrovirus in blinded samples of Dr. Bell's original pediatric patients, ten of Dr. Cheney’s patients and for the first time adult patients from Dr. Levine’s practice in New York. All told it would contain over 100 samples - a large study. Herst Labs had twice reported high positive rates for CFS patients and Dr. Martin was engaged in his own search for a retrovirus. Dr. DeFreitas had been able to pick out the CFS patients from Dr. Bell and Dr. Cheney patients before - she would have an opportunity to do so again. This time there would be no question of the wrong types of patients mucking up the works.

The CDC Steps Back In - At this point the CDC stepped back in to propose another study. Dr. Martin was out - instead, both the agency and Dr. DeFreitas would look for the retrovirus in nine of Dr. Bell's patients from the original study and in healthy controls. Since the study would focus on known CFS patients it, too, would bypass the patient selection question; all Dr. DeFreitas would be asked to do would be to identify her own CFS patients; if she could do that, the agency would start again and come to her lab and relearn her techniques.

Dr. DeFreitas balked, however, after the agency stated it would reveal only at its discretion the techniques it used and would call the study ‘idiopathic chronic fatiguing illness in Lyndonville” instead of chronic fatigue syndrome. Their rapid timeline also conflicted with her more time consuming approach. She invited the agency instead to join the study the CFIDS Association was funding. They refused.

The search for a retrovirus at the CDC was not over; Folks would work with two other retrovirologists but none of their findings would pan out and a search for a wide array of retroviruses would come up negative a year or so later.

The End - Dr. DeFreitas move to Florida coincided with arrival of a fierce hurricane which prevented her from completing her part of the study on time. On Sept 19, 1992, however, the codes from the other parties were broken in a conference call containing all the major participants; it took 30 minutes to go through the results, but at the end the pattern was clear; no one had come close to correctly identifying the CFS patients. One member said “they might as well have thrown darts” and the result left Dr. Gunn furious that he’d bet the latter end of his career on the retrovirus.

Still, the DeFreitas results were not in and she stated that while the Herst lab’s tests were analogous to hers they didn’t exactly duplicate her testing procedures. The most important replication attempt remained unfinished...as it does (apparently) today. Two years later, disabled and in pain, Dr. DeFreitas retired without testing her samples. It’s hard to believe that Dr. DeFreitas wouldn’t take her last shot at testing those samples but there’s no word in Osler’s Web on the outcome of those tests, if they were done. The search for the HTLV-2 like retrovirus in CFS was over.

In retrospect Dr. Folks was somewhat incredulous about the history of the collaboration. He felt that Dr. DeFreitas’ requirement that her protocols should be reproduced exactly to the letter (i.e. use one brand of enzyme versus another) was unscientific. Any good laboratory should, he thought, based on the parameters of the paper, be able to reproduce her results. Dr. Klimas, an immunologist, disagreed.

Dr. Folks also wondered, why, with the stakes as high as they were, hadn’t Dr. DeFreitas been willing to come to their lab or, if not, why not choose another world-class retroviral lab to test her findings? (Dr. DeFreitas would later, regretfully, wonder why she hadn’t just gone to the Gallo labs first). Why hadn’t she sent all her materials to the CDC? He then listed off four labs that had tried and failed to confirm her findings; his, Dr. Gallo’s, Dr. Gow’s and Dr. Levy’s. (We can add to this Chiron Labs, Herst Labs and a Japanese team.)(Later Dr. DeFreitas would state that her requests to visit the CDC lab had been denied.)

Still, some questions remained; why, a year earlier, had the CDC been able to duplicate Dr. DeFreitas results? What about that other set of patients - the ones with psychiatric difficulties? The CDC never examined the possibility that the virus was limited to a specific subset of patients - not in retrospect a far-out possibility given the heterogeneity in this population. Dr. Folks would assert that the virus was an endogenous retrovirus but then why was it not showing up in the cord blood Dr. DeFreitas reported sampling? And why did two labs that were purportedly following her directions come to the opposite results? Didn't that suggest that at least one of them was doing the proctocol incorrectly?

Dr. DeFreitas career, while it taken a substantial hit, was not ended by the controversy over the retrovirus. She did, after all, have a substantial track record before CFS and a tenured position at University of Miami. What brought her down, ironically, was her health. After a car accident in 1990 she slowly developed a painful condition called reflex sympathetic dystrophy. By the end of 1993 she was in a wheelchair. By the end of 1994 she was totally disabled.

In the end she would blame herself for announcing early, the CAA for pushing her into the media and asking her to do too much too early and the CDC for what she perceived to be their lackluster efforts. She came to believe the CDC never wanted to find the virus. To some extent Tom Folks would agree about being rushed; the public announcement had lit a fire under everyone - Dr. DeFreitas, the CDC, the CAA - with the result that what should have taken years was compressed into one or two. (Marc Iverson would later speculate that it would take their other retrovirologist, Dr. Grossberg, five years to track down his virus. The CAA would keep funding Dr. Grossberg’s search for a retrovirus but in a secretive manner; he and they had learned the cost of going public.)

With the expensive PCR's, its clear that resources were also a key issue for everyone. After criticizing the CAA for “giving Dr. DeFreitas up” Dr. Bell noted that no small poorly supported patient organization had the money to fund the kind of research Dr. DeFreitas needed. Indeed the CFIDS Association was Dr. DeFreitas sole source of funding for years and continued to fund retroviral research for years afterwards with no discernable return on their money. None of the three retroviral investigations the organization was funding at the time (Dr. De Freitas’, Dr. Martin’s and Dr. Grossberg’s) panned out. Seven years later the CFIDS was still funding Dr. Grossberg but no papers were ever forthcoming. In 2001 the National CFIDS Association's attempt to find an HTLV-2 retrovirus in CFS patients would come up short as well.

What Dr. DeFreitas desperately needed was NIH money - which was not forthcoming - or a success at the CDC, or Chiron or Herst (which could conceivably gotten her NIH money)- unfortunately neither were forthcoming. According to Dr. Folks the CDC spent about $500,00 on the virus before the higher-ups at the CDC drew the noose on Dr. DeFreitas’ work .

Conclusion? - the retroviral field is both a difficult and expensive one. Dr. DeFreitas was no novice and she was working under one of the top virologists in the country. Their work - focused on the effects of retroviruses on the central nervous system in diseases such as multiple sclerosis - seemed perfect for the task at hand. Yet they failed. They may very well have got it wrong; the evidence suggests, in fact, that they did and they wouldn't be the first - but it was clear that resources - or the lack of them - also played a role.

Centers For Disease Control - In some ways the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) is not in such a different place today than it was almost 20 years ago. Yes, the former head of the CDC stood up at a National Press event not long ago and proclaimed that chronic fatigue syndrome was a real disease. Yes, ME/CFS has gained legitimacy over the years and it's rarely discussed, at least in the US, in purely psychological terms. But it’s clear the CDC does not believe ME/CFS is an important or significant disorder.

The jokes may or may not still be present but the paltry budgets (even as the CDC's own CFS prevalence figures rise) remain and indicate the disease - measured in the most important arena, funding - is still treated with disdain by the agency. How else to explain spending $3 million a year on a disease that the agency’s own studies indicate is more prevalent than breast cancer, more economically costly than asthma ($200 million/year NIH funding) and can be as disabling as multiple sclerosis? Dr. Gunn’s request of 18 years ago “that CDC began to treat the study of the syndrome the same degree of concern would be afforded to any other serious illness” goes unfulfilled today."
Continue reading the Original Blog Post

https://forums.phoenixrising.me/thr...rus-in-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-me-cfs.59455/
So it seems history weirdly repeated itself. Both DeFeitas and Mikovits had their pursuit of the retrovirus undermined by studies which did not use real CFS patients. One of the main studies used to bury XMRV according to Mikovits, used only people who complained of fatigue over actual diagnosed CFS patients. The game changing study which sent the XMRV-CFS connection down memory hole never used real CFS patients. She also said the authors of the study seemed to be going out of their way to do so.

That's like your landlord hiring an exterminator to kill rats, but only allowing the exterminator to check in your freezer for rats. Then the landlord leaves you with a rat problem by saying, "Well we did check and didn't see anything," -when any one with a brain knows rats can't and don't live in freezers. The landlord in this case would appear like he made an effort.

But he made no effort.
Looking in the wrong place is a damned good way not find anything.
 
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Seven7

Seven
Messages
3,444
Location
USA
I don’t believe in conspiracy theory. I do not have any mental disorder. And one has to agree that cfs history is Bizare as heck and I do not believe in coincidences ( so many) and the level of negligence unless was on purpose. We just need to know what really happened. But that something happened, happened ( I doubt it was intentional , too messy to be so).
 

Annikki

Senior Member
Messages
146
I was trying to find the rest of the studies, which I had problems with. Google provided too many links which weren't studies, but a bunch of other sorts of entries. I only found 2 XMRV studies from using this method. I could have worked harder at it, but I'm sick. I knew there were more studies, so instead, I went to a scholarly utility to find all the XMRV studies I could find.
Here they are:
Development of XMRV producing B Cell lines from lymphomas from patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
https://www.researchgate.net/public...s_from_patients_with_Chronic_Fatigue_Syndrome

Immune correlates of XMRV infection
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251401128_Immune_correlates_of_XMRV_infection

Xenotropic MuLV-related virus clone WPI-1104 putative gag polyprotein (gag) and putative envelope glycoprotein (env) genes, partial cds
https://www.researchgate.net/public...e_envelope_glycoprotein_env_genes_partial_cds

Detection of an Infectious Retrovirus, XMRV, in Blood Cells of Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
https://www.researchgate.net/public...lls_of_Patients_with_Chronic_Fatigue_Syndrome

Multi-laboratory evaluations of XMRV nucleic acid detection assays
https://www.researchgate.net/public...uations_of_XMRV_nucleic_acid_detection_assays

109 XMRV: Virological, Immunological and Clinical Correlations in a Patient with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
https://www.researchgate.net/public...n_a_Patient_with_Chronic_Lymphocytic_Leukemia

Xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus-associated chronic fatigue syndrome reveals a distinct inflammatory signature
https://www.researchgate.net/public...n_a_Patient_with_Chronic_Lymphocytic_Leukemia

Distribution of Xenotropic Murine Leukemia Virus-Related Virus (XMRV) Infection in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Prostate Cancer
https://www.researchgate.net/public..._Chronic_Fatigue_Syndrome_and_Prostate_Cancer

Xenotropic MuLV-related virus clone WPI-1178 putative gag-pro-pol polyprotein (gag-pro-pol), putative gag polyprotein (gag), and putative envelope glycoprotein (env) genes, complete cds
https://www.researchgate.net/public..._envelope_glycoprotein_env_genes_complete_cds

Xenotropic MuLV-related virus clone WPI-1106 putative gag-pro-pol polyprotein (gag-pro-pol), putative gag polyprotein (gag), and putative envelope glycoprotein (env) genes, complete cds
https://www.researchgate.net/public..._envelope_glycoprotein_env_genes_complete_cds

Inactivation of XMRV in platelet and RBC components prepared with the INTERCEPT blood system [abstract]
https://www.researchgate.net/public...ared_with_the_INTERCEPT_blood_system_abstract
 
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dannybex

Senior Member
Messages
3,561
Location
Seattle
most of the studies you listed not only don't have the abstracts, but only list the TITLES of the studies

none of the other studies you listed proved that XMRV causes ME/CFS as per your original claim. You listed several that were retracted, including the main one

And again, Dr. Mikovits herself participated and signed her name to the final study in 2012 that concluded 'there was no association between CFS/ME and XMRV'. You can read it right here in the link below.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3448165/
 
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Annikki

Senior Member
Messages
146
most of the studies you listed not only don't have the abstracts, but only list the TITLES of the studies

none of the other studies you listed proved that XMRV causes ME/CFS as per your original claim. You even listed several that were retracted, including the main one

And again, Dr. Mikovits herself participated and signed her name to the final study in 2012 that concluded 'there was no association between CFS/ME and XMRV'. You can read it right here in the link below.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3448165/


All you or anyone need do is click on a link to each abstract and find the link for the full text of a study. Most all of them let you download the full text for free

I emphasize that a valid point is a valid point, regardless of who says it. I know full well Judy Mikovit's name was maligned and her description of reality ignored. However, I also recognize also that every ME/CFS patient here has been victim of the exact same thing- myself included.

I don't buy into appealing to an authority like the major science journals like Science, which retracted the XMRV study, since I know their advertisers are pharmaceutical companies, some of which manufacture vaccines. News in this current time in human history, is largely determined by advertising dollars.[/QUOTE]
 
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Mary

Moderator Resource
Messages
17,335
Location
Southern California
THIS THREAD IS BEING REOPENED - I'D REMIND MEMBERS TO STICK TO THE ISSUES AND AVOID PERSONAL COMMENTS - SEE FORUM RULE 1, FORUM RULES EXPLAINED, WHICH STATES IN PART:

When a member chooses to attack the author of a post rather than the content of the post, that is a personal attack. Please keep your focus on the facts of the topic under discussion - not on the person with whom you disagree.
 
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