Article: Retrovirology: Five Papers on XMRV and Contamination
- Thread starter Phoenix Rising Team
- Start date
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.
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.
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.
So would that mean HIV?
I'm not sure, but I don't think that mice have any retroviruses like HIV. Monkeys do (and cats) so using either of those species would be a contamination issue with HIV. The problem in this case is that XMRV is very close to a mouse retrovirus (the M of XMRV is for 'Murine Leukemia Related') so mouse DNA is the danger.
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