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DeFreitas 1991 Retrovirus/CFS Study

jenbooks

Guest
Messages
1,270
There are two parallel and eerily similar stories of the NIH/CDC suppressing this retrovirus information and destroying the work/career of the researcher, and suppressing all related borrelia/lyme epidemic information and destroying it. The epidemics track concurrently and were both squelched while so many suffered and some died.

I'd love to know why. I don't think we'll ever know. I really don't think it was ineptitude. That's when I start thinking military-industrial complex and "national security"--. Then I get into conspiracy theories. What good does that do me now.
 

starryeyes

Senior Member
Messages
1,558
Location
Bay Area, California
Hi Jenbooks,

Good to see you. What you wrote is interesting to me too.

I read your post then saw below, "Tags: None" and at first I thought someone was answering your post with "None" which is possibly apropos.

I know just what you mean but I am very intrigued. I was hoping that someone that understands the science in this article better than me might have some insights too. I also wonder what other PWC are thinking about this so it's good to hear your thoughts.

What is De Freitas thinking?

My prayers go to her and all of us trapped in this nightmare.

tee
 

starryeyes

Senior Member
Messages
1,558
Location
Bay Area, California
Hi Summer

Thanks for the Welcome. :)

Ooops! I probably should have posted this there. Well, the Mods have my permission to move it if they want to.

I'll go check that out now. Thanks.

tee
 

Martlet

Senior Member
Messages
1,837
Location
Near St Louis, MO
I don't really get into conspiracy theories, but I did wonder, when I fell ill, why there were so many of us clustered around US air force bases in the UK. My husband is retired military and he has wondered too. Of course, we will never know.
 
A

Aftermath

Guest
Threads Merged

Thanks for the Welcome. :)

Ooops! I probably should have posted this there. Well, the Mods have my permission to move it if they want to.

I'll go check that out now. Thanks.

tee

No big deal. I just merged your new thread with the existing one.

Thanks for sharing.
 

oerganix

Senior Member
Messages
611
WE may never know, but the next generation might. Through the Freedom of Information Act and other sources, past military experimentation on human subjects, including the aerial spraying of bacteria and viruses, has been revealed. My interest in this arises because I first got sick during a massive "flu" epidemic in the middle of the summer of 1982. I was living down wind of an Army Naval base and an Army hospital at the time.

Just Google "military releases LSD" or visit this site: http://www.rense.com/general36/history.htm

"1950 In an experiment to determine how susceptible an American city would be to biological attack, the U.S. Navy sprays a cloud of bacteria from ships over San Franciso. Monitoring devices are situated throughout the city in order to test the extent of infection. Many residents become ill with pneumonia-like symptoms.

1951 Department of Defense begins open air tests using disease-producing bacteria and viruses. Tests last through 1969 and there is concern that people in the surrounding areas have been exposed.

1953 U.S. military releases clouds of zinc cadmium sulfide gas over Winnipeg, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Fort Wayne, the Monocacy River Valley in Maryland, and Leesburg, Virginia. Their intent is to determine how efficiently they could disperse chemical agents.

1953 Joint Army-Navy-CIA experiments are conducted in which tens of thousands of people in New York and San Francisco are exposed to the airborne germs Serratia marcescens and Bacillus glogigii.

1953 CIA initiates Project MKULTRA. This is an eleven year research program designed to produce and test drugs and biological agents that would be used for mind control and behavior modification. Six of the subprojects involved testing the agents on unwitting human beings.

1955 The CIA, in an experiment to test its ability to infect human populations with biological agents, releases a bacteria withdrawn from the Army's biological warfare arsenal over Tampa Bay, Fl.

1955 Army Chemical Corps continues LSD research, studying its potential use as a chemical incapacitating agent. More than 1,000 Americans participate in the tests, which continue until 1958.

1956 U.S. military releases mosquitoes infected with Yellow Fever over Savannah, Ga and Avon Park, Fl. Following each test, Army agents posing as public health officials test victims for effects."
 

Cort

Phoenix Rising Founder
I just want to point out that as I remember from Osler's Web De Freitas primer (or whatever it was) was very tricky - unusually tricky - to produce. It wasn't just the CDC that was unable to produce her results. Dr Gow in the UK wasn't able to as well and a Japanese study a year later was unable to find any evidence of that type of retrovirus either.

Perhaps the CDC did screw up the process but the what happened to Dr. Gow's study? or the Japanese one?

The CFIDS Association as I remember provided a lot of funding to De Freitas. At some point they backed out based on the advice of the researchers they were consulting with. If anyone wanted to find a retrovirus it was the CFIDS Association. Remember it was started by Mark Iverson - who was very ill at the time and is still very ill. He had a huge stake in finding a retrovirus but even the CFIDS Association backed away and put their research money elsewhere - they thought she was wrong, that the effort was a failure. That's the only answer that makes sense.

The CDC personnel were all virologists; the CDC's CFS research program is still placed in the virology department. I assume they would've loved to have found a new retrovirus they could play around with. Honestly I don't buy the CDC conspiracy theory. I think that it's a very tricky field and most people who know about the field probably thought it just didn't work out for whatever reason. That's my guess in hindsight. Maybe it will be proved wrong.
 

cfs since 1998

Senior Member
Messages
603
retrovirus conspiracy

I won't rule out that XMRV was created by the military or leaked from a government lab, but if that is the case the CDC probably does not even know it. Most likely, the CDC is just protecting their own image, Reeves is protecting his image and his professorship at Emory, and from what I've read of Hillary Johnson's writing, they are also doing this to funnel money to their favored contractors.

By the way Dr. Gow also refuted and was unable to replicate the RNase-L dysregulation, so I don't have a large amount of faith in his research.
 

Cort

Phoenix Rising Founder
That's right - I remember that. I was surprised that he used precious research funds to try and tear down another finding. With all the things you could research that might get you somewhere why simply tried to negate something else. :rolleyes:Forgot all about that.
 

starryeyes

Senior Member
Messages
1,558
Location
Bay Area, California
DeFreitas's Retrovirus

Hi Cort, thanks so much for setting up this site. It's great here. :)

It's possible that the CDC is just incompetent and that's what they are trying to cover up. However, DeFreitas was totally maligned by them and that looks suspicious. I recall that from Osler's Web and others are stating it here too. I wish I still had the book Osler's Web but my dad wanted to borrow it and now he can't find it. I may be getting another one maybe for Christmas.

Anyway, I recall reading that DeFreitas said she was doing the testing in vivo which means live blood and that all the other researchers trying to replicate her findings were doing the testing in vitro, which means in the test tube. Does anyone else remember that?

Also, Cort or anyone else, can you explain how it is that the CDC suddenly ran out of funds and couldn't fly researchers out to DeFreitas when she offered to show them every step she was doing to find the retrovirus CAV?

Plus, look what Jenbooks wrote further up in this thread: “There are two parallel and eerily similar stories of the NIH/CDC suppressing this retrovirus information and destroying the work/career of the researcher, and suppressing all related borrelia/lyme epidemic information and destroying it. The epidemics track concurrently and were both squelched while so many suffered and some died.”
 

Andrew

Senior Member
Messages
2,513
Location
Los Angeles, USA
Another thing that went wrong is DeFreitas's boss encouraged her to go public before she was ready to publish. They both knew this put her work at greater risk, because it put her under scrutiny before she was in the best position to defend it. Following this, her boss transfered out of his position, and so he was no longer there to protect her.

Of course, hindsight is great. And in Osler's Web it covers DeFreitas's ruminations over how it could have been handled better. But I still think the CDC's charter obligates them to do all they can to protect citizens from infectious illnesses. That is their job. That is what they are paid to do. And they refused an offer from DeFreitas to help them iron out any oversights they might have in replicating her procedure.

As for the other places failing to replicate, this worked against her. But there is more to this. One place did replicate, after she showed them where they were doing it wrong. And this never seemed to count in her favor.

I saw an interview with Nancy Klimas where she suggested that that it is better to spend our energy on what we have to do next, instead of going over and over the past. I don't seem to be able to follow her advice. But despite all of this, I think DeFreitas has been vindicated.
 

jenbooks

Guest
Messages
1,270
Somehow that hit song comes to mind:

'Cause I was in the right place, but it must have been the wrong time
And I was sayin' the right thing, but I must have used the wrong line
I took the right road but I must have took a wrong turn
I took a right move but I made it at the wrong time
I was in the right trip but I made it in the wrong car
My head is in a good place and I wonder what it's there for
 

MEKoan

Senior Member
Messages
2,630
"DeFreitas Disease"

has a nice ring to it. There is really no other way to make it up to this woman if she is now disabled and unable to work. No possibility of an exciting career, no new discoveries in the future, no real way to say you were cheated and mistreated and abused...

"DeFreitas Disease"
 

Daisymay

Senior Member
Messages
754
Gow's paper on DeFreitas

From Dr Gow's paper in the early '90s, which also failed to replicate Elaine DeFreitas work, he admitted he had only looked for human retroviruses known at the time.

In the last sentence of his paper he states:

"From the data reported here, we cannot exclude the possibility that a very distantly related retrovirus is also associated with post-viral fatigue syndrome, but this seems very unlikely."

So yes very unliely but that is just what they've found.

Cort, you said Harvey Whittemore said theDeFreitas virus and XMRV were not one and the same, is this definitely proven fact now then?
 

MEKoan

Senior Member
Messages
2,630
If I remember correctly, it was not just the CDC that rushed DeFreitas but also the CFIDS Assoc.

Didn't they encourage her to publish and do press conferences too early, in her estimation at the time, and then bail on her, distance themselves from her, and stop funding her work when her warnings proved to be accurate?

Elaine DeFreitas undoing was a joint effort. I believe that had the CIFDS Assoc. not allied itself so closely with the CDC, and had they supported the continuation of her remarkable work (done with 2 grad. students in a tiny lab) we would now be more than a decade ahead of where we are.

It's all hindsight, of course, but had people simply listened to this fine scientist, allowed her to work at a reasonable pace and not forced her to jump the shark, 15 years of suffering may have been prevented. 20/20 vision that even Elaine DeFreitas did not have at the time.

Nevertheless, had people listened to her...
 

MEKoan

Senior Member
Messages
2,630
Wouldn't it be beyond odd that DeFreitas was hot on the trail of an unknown retrovirus and then a novel retrovirus is found but it's not the same one?