Dr Mikovits on her work with Lipkin:
'I am committed to moving forward this work and am working as the PI on the Lipkin study
according to the original study design and we are confident that no matter what the results with MRVs, this study will move the field forward...'
28 December 2011:
http://lymebook.com/vogan-blog/?p=130
Last chance saloon (in terms of trying to verify the original methodology in Lombardi et al. and this being the only funded study in town at present).
On the 'they looked and couldn't find contamination' front, well this one had some scientists perplexed at the time. I see Prof Racaniello is still perplexed by the claim reiterated in the retraction notice:
'The retraction of the Lo-Alter PNAS paper curiously begins with the assertion that the authors could not detect contaminating mouse DNA in their samples which was most certainly present and lead to their detection of MLV-like sequences.
''Although our published findings were reproducible in our laboratory and while there has been no evidence of contamination using sensitive mouse mitochondrial DNA or IAP assays or in testing coded panels''
This failure remains puzzling and unexplained; but as they report in the next paragraph, they appear to have run out of material to distribute to other laboratories for independent confirmation.'
http://www.virology.ws/2011/12/26/a...mia-virus-releated-sequences-in-cfs-patients/
ERV at the time of publication went so far as to say (in her own 'snarky; way

):
'Okay, well, logically it could be contamination from mouse DNA. So they checked for that... by looking for mouse mitochondrial DNA.
*blink*
I understand why they did it-- mitochondrial DNA is easier to find than genomic DNA, because there are more mitochondria in a cell than genome. But you kinda need to look for mouse genomic DNA contamination when one of your phyologenetic trees has your 'viral sequences' so closely related to mouse ERVs on four different chromosomes that it doesnt even form a proper branch.
Cause ERVs are in genomes. Not mitochondrial DNA.'
http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2010/08/xmrv_and_chronic_fatigue_syndr_16.php
Gods know what the 'answer' (assuming there is one) actually is - but perhaps they didn't look hard enough or indeed ran out of samples with which to look hard enough?!